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Speaker 1: Good morning everybody. It's Saturday here in the world. I'm Chuck.

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Speaker 1: I'm your co host of Stuff you Should Know, and

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Speaker 1: it is my charge, my duty to pick out this

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Speaker 1: week's Saturday Select selection. I'm going with hal Famines work

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Speaker 1: from February thirteenth, twenty seventeen. Pretty interesting stuff and also

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Speaker 1: a little bit sad. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know,

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Speaker 1: a production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with

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Speaker 2: Charles W Chuck Bryant and Jerry the jerister that should

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Speaker 2: we say? What just happened? It's weird, of course, said focus?

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Speaker 1: Yeah, like, oh what is this? Nine hundred and probably

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Speaker 1: twenty something thirty something episodes?

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Speaker 2: Let's get up there.

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Speaker 1: And for the first time ever, right before we went go,

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Speaker 1: Jerry said, focus, what does that mean?

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Speaker 2: Usually she goes, huh what I don't get it?

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Speaker 1: Is this me so bothering?

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Speaker 2: You guys? Right? Exactly?

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Speaker 1: Smell me so bothering?

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Speaker 2: That's so Jerry?

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Speaker 1: Focus?

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Speaker 2: All right?

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Speaker 1: I feel pressure now, Yeah I do.

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Speaker 2: I'm a little off now Jerry, thanks?

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Speaker 1: So yeah, that worked, all right.

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Speaker 2: Let's concentrate, all right, So we're talking Chuck about you

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Speaker 2: is your eye.

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Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, I got something large in it.

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Speaker 2: We're talking about famine today, yes, which goes with our

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Speaker 2: super sad, horrific geopolitical catastrophe sweets.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, this probably will not be chock full of humor. No,

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Speaker 1: I try to think of a way to insert some jokes.

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Speaker 1: There's not unless we go on a tangent.

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Speaker 2: Do you remember though eighties stand up comedians like they

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Speaker 2: would make just the worst jokes that just would not fly,

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Speaker 2: Like they get chased off stage by what are you

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Speaker 2: people with? Like, like just the jokes they would make

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Speaker 2: AIDS jokes and famine jokes. Oh yeah yeah, as far

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Speaker 2: as just like the material they would make jokes about

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Speaker 2: and the like they weren't even remotely funny, you know. Yeah,

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Speaker 2: it was not nuanced or smarts or anything.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. I think Sam Kennison made like starving Ethiopian kid jokes, right,

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Speaker 1: I give him a sandwich camera man. Wasn't that him?

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Speaker 2: Was that him?

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Speaker 1: I think? So, like just people can't do that today.

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Speaker 2: It's a different world. Yeah, So yeah, there probably won't

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Speaker 2: be any jokes in this one. Yeah. What there will

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Speaker 2: be is tons of information and hopefully everybody who will

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Speaker 2: understand famines after this can come together and prevent them

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Speaker 2: for the rest of eternity unless climate change gets it,

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Speaker 2: says we'll see at the end. Yes, I just spoiled

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Speaker 2: it though, didn't I.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, that's I'm glad you said that that was relevant.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: So everybody has a pretty good idea of what famine is.

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Speaker 2: It's when you run out of food and a bunch

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Speaker 2: of people start dying. That's actually pretty close to the

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Speaker 2: great real definition. But there's this guy who's a scholar

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Speaker 2: of famine. His name is Cormac Gograda, and he has

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Speaker 2: written several books on famines and studied famines, and he's

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Speaker 2: a pretty sharp tack. So people kind of look to

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Speaker 2: him to say, what's the actual definition of a famine

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Speaker 2: and he says, in his best Irish accent, it's a

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Speaker 2: lot like malnutrition, Yeah, but it's a lot worse. There's

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Speaker 2: a lot more crisis, there's a lot more death.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Specifically, he says, it's a shortage of food or

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Speaker 1: purchasing power that leads directly to excess mortality from starvation

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Speaker 1: or hunger induced diseases. And that's an important addition because

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Speaker 1: it's not just hunger starvation related but all the disease

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Speaker 1: it comes along with that that can kill people very

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Speaker 1: much more easily because you are so undernourished.

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Speaker 2: Right, And we'll find out too. It forms a bit

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Speaker 2: of a vicious cycle. Like as people start to get

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Speaker 2: hungry and start to starve and start to suffer from disease,

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Speaker 2: they have an even harder time, say, working in field

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Speaker 2: to produce crops, and so the whole thing just keeps

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Speaker 2: getting worse and worse and worse. Once it passes breaking point,

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Speaker 2: it really starts to spiral out of control.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a It's a three pronged terror of poverty, hunger,

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Speaker 1: and disease, right, all contributing to one another.

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Speaker 2: Right. So Cormaco Grada's definition of a famine is a

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Speaker 2: daily death rate of above one per ten thousand people.

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Speaker 1: Is that ten thousand?

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Speaker 2: Yeah?

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Speaker 1: All right, I had a period and not a comma.

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Speaker 2: That's a that's European and I didn't, is it. It's

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Speaker 2: gotta be.

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Speaker 1: Because that didn't. That's like point zero zero zero one

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Speaker 1: percent of the population per day, is that right?

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Speaker 2: Yeah? I think that is ten thousand. Okay, because just

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Speaker 2: off the top of my head, like that normal American

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Speaker 2: death rate is like eight hundred and twenty three per

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Speaker 2: one hundred thousand people, So that is significantly more.

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Speaker 1: All right, So that daily death rate, that's the first characteristic.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. Number two is the proportion of wasted children is

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Speaker 2: above twenty percent, And wasted means their muscle mass is

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Speaker 2: withering away due to starvation.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Technically it means they weigh two standard deviations or

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Speaker 1: more below average. And just that term itself is like

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Speaker 1: the most heartbreaking thing you can make.

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Speaker 2: Wasted children. Yeah, in any sense, it's not a good

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Speaker 2: thing good, especially when it has to do with famine.

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Speaker 1: And then finally, the prevalence of what's called quashercore, which

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Speaker 1: is it's basically an extreme malnutrition due to protein deficiency.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and those pictures everybody who grew up in the eighties, Yeah,

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Speaker 2: and saw the pictures of the starving children in Africa.

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Speaker 2: There were just little skin and bone kids, but they

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Speaker 2: had these huge, bloated pot bellies. Yeah, that's a classic

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Speaker 2: hallmark of quash core.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Very sad. Yeah, and then he went on to

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Speaker 1: qualify further with severe famine that means a daily death

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Speaker 1: rate above five out of ten thousand, proportion of wasted

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Speaker 1: children above forty percent, and then that same quasher core prevalence.

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Speaker 2: Right, So if quasher core's around, you got a famine

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Speaker 2: on your hands. That's not a normal thing that happens

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Speaker 2: in a normal food secure population.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's the main distinguishing factor between famine and

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Speaker 1: just what you would consider malnutrition. And this is all

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Speaker 1: tied into what we call food security, right. And we

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Speaker 1: talked about food security before, I think maybe in desertification

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Speaker 1: or something like that. Yeah, I know we have at

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Speaker 1: some point, but we talked a lot about the food

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Speaker 1: the green revolution to which factors in. But food security

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Speaker 1: is that means you have food available, you can get

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Speaker 1: to that food, or that food can get to you readily,

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Speaker 1: and you can use that food to meet your health needs.

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Speaker 1: You can leverage it to make your population healthy.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, Like if it's if your entire countries food supply

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Speaker 2: is twinkies, you do not have food security. There's an

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Speaker 2: abundance of it, people can get to it very easily.

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Speaker 2: It's probably affordable for everybody, but it's not nutritious. Or

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Speaker 2: if your country has nothing but like the finest fruits

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Speaker 2: and vegetables and proteins, but only the very wealthy have

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Speaker 2: access to it because it's too expensive. Well, you don't

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Speaker 2: have food security. So according to the UN, if you

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Speaker 2: have food security in a nation, all people at all

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Speaker 2: times have physical, social, and economic access to sufficient, safe,

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Speaker 2: and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and get

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Speaker 2: this food preferences for an active and healthy life.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, which I mean, we'll talk about Ethiopia some later,

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Speaker 1: but at one point the goal was, which they you know,

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Speaker 1: never met, was that not only would they have food

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Speaker 1: one day readily available, but be able to choose what

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Speaker 1: they wanted to eat, right, Like this something you don't

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Speaker 1: think about. You really take that for granted here in

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Speaker 1: the United States and elsewhere. It's not just having food,

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Speaker 1: but like, oh I might like to eat this or that,

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Speaker 1: right you know. All right, So a lot of things

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Speaker 1: can affect this food security, and we're going to talk

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Speaker 1: about all these as throughout the show as they relate

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Speaker 1: to famine. But obviously you think of natural disasters first,

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Speaker 1: and probably drought first.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a big one.

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Speaker 1: It is a big one, undeniably.

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Speaker 2: If you don't have water and rain, you can't grow

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Speaker 2: crops usually no.

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Speaker 1: Crop blight, which we'll talk a little bit about the

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Speaker 1: potato famine in Ireland later on.

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Speaker 2: But any kind of disease pest, even like an over

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Speaker 2: abundance of weeds, could conceivably ruin a crop flooding.

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Speaker 1: Extraordinarily cold weather, extraordinary hot weather, we'll just say weather

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Speaker 1: patterns in general, Yes, severe weather. And then a big

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Speaker 1: one which a lot of people, a lot of people

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Speaker 1: I think mainly think of natural disasters or natural factors,

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Speaker 1: and political conflict is one of the big, big, big contributors.

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Speaker 1: So here we'll see.

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Speaker 2: This is what we're coming to though, eventually, is there

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Speaker 2: is a big debate on what causes famine. And for many,

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Speaker 2: many years everyone said, well, don't be dumb, droughts cause famine, right,

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Speaker 2: But studies, much more recent studies have found that actually,

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Speaker 2: if you kind of peek behind the curtain a little bit, yeah,

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Speaker 2: there was a drought and it started the famine. But

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Speaker 2: what actually caused the famine, yeah, or caused it to

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Speaker 2: be horrible is usually government, either government that has bungled

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Speaker 2: something or just isn't moved to actually care to do

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Speaker 2: anything to alleviate the famine. As we'll see.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, what I gathered from reading this was most famine

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Speaker 1: throughout all of history has been caused by natural factors,

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Speaker 1: but modern famine, like from the nineteenth century on, has

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Speaker 1: largely been that plus government factors. Yeah, does that sound

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Speaker 1: about right?

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Speaker 2: Yeah. I think the very presence of famine in the

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Speaker 2: globalized era is just because of governments screwing things up.

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Speaker 1: Yes, because there is enough food defeat everyone at this point.

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Speaker 2: Right, and enough of a trade supply lines and government

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Speaker 2: aid agencies and goos who are working to get that

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Speaker 2: food to those people in crises that a lot of

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Speaker 2: times there's people standing in their way.

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Speaker 1: Yes. Another big It can be sort of a domino

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Speaker 1: effect too. So when you have food security in one

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Speaker 1: place start to crumble or wane, then you have another

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Speaker 1: country nearby maybe that may start stockpiling for themselves fewer

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Speaker 1: exports and protecting their own population, and then that drives

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Speaker 1: up prices for people that were depending on importing that food,

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Speaker 1: and it just starts this big vicious cycle.

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Speaker 2: Right exactly. Back in two thousand and eight, there were

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Speaker 2: food riots in Bangladesh and Haiti and Egypt. Do you

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Speaker 2: remember that.

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Speaker 1: Because of rice? Right?

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Speaker 2: It was because of rice, but the global food price

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Speaker 2: had Like when they look at food prices, they look

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Speaker 2: at baskets of foods around the world. Put them together

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Speaker 2: and say this is how much food costs these days.

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Speaker 2: It rose between two thousand and two and two thousand

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Speaker 2: and eight, food prices rose one hundred and forty percent globally,

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Speaker 2: and a lot of people got priced out of the market.

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Speaker 2: And when they looked at what happened, apparently seventy five

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Speaker 2: percent of that price increase was due to using food

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Speaker 2: for biofuels, like using crops that normally would have gone

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Speaker 2: to food were being used to create energy like biofuels, right,

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Speaker 2: And so that drove grain prices up through the roof

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Speaker 2: because speculators got involved and food was being diverted from

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Speaker 2: the food supply into the energy supply, and then crop

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Speaker 2: land was being increasingly diverted to produce this stuff for

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Speaker 2: the energy supply as well, and it had a huge

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Speaker 2: effect that just drove food prices up around the world.

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Speaker 2: One of the big problems that can contribute to famines

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Speaker 2: is we'll see in a lot of famines there are

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Speaker 2: people still producing food for export because they can't afford it,

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Speaker 2: that are starving, but their country's starving to death, but

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Speaker 2: they can't afford it because they don't have the money

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Speaker 2: so ts, but the rest of us do have the money,

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Speaker 2: so keep growing that food.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's pretty devastating effect. Yeah, and it's obviously most

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Speaker 1: devastating for and you always hear about this the two groups,

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Speaker 1: the elderly and the young. I don't know about the

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Speaker 1: total number of children, but the stat that I have

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Speaker 1: from the UN, the most recent stat I have, is

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Speaker 1: that twenty one thousand children die of hunger every day day. Yep,

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Speaker 1: geeze every four seconds.

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Speaker 2: Oh that's awful.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's sobering to say the least. So you know

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Speaker 1: what happens is, especially if you're younger, you're old, that

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Speaker 1: disease sets in and little kids and old people can't

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Speaker 1: fight it like you know the parents can. And then

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Speaker 1: you know the parents are in bad shape too. Well,

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Speaker 1: it's not like anyone's doing great.

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Speaker 2: When you're malnourished, your immune system starts to decline. And

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Speaker 2: when your immune system starts to decline, that's disease comes in.

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Speaker 2: Especially if a group starts to migrate in search of food. Yeah,

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Speaker 2: because then you could be living in unsanitary conditions and

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Speaker 2: everybody has lower immune systems and you're basically in a herd. Now,

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Speaker 2: like moving to a different place to get food, and

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Speaker 2: a disease can just rip through a population.

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Speaker 1: Well yeah, and that article points out that refugees are

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Speaker 1: not often resettled in, you know, the most hospitable areas either,

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Speaker 1: so moving doesn't necessarily help the cause in a lot

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Speaker 1: of cases. All right, let's take a break and we're

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Speaker 1: going to come back and talk a little bit about

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Speaker 1: some of the more noteworthy famines throughout history. All right,

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Speaker 1: So I said we're going to talk about historical famines.

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Speaker 1: I lied, that's coming later. Is that all right?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, that's fine.

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Speaker 1: All right, So we're going to talk You sent this

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Speaker 1: great article. What was the name of.

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Speaker 2: It, The History of Humanity is a History of hunger.

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Speaker 2: It was written by a guy named Mark Joseph Stern

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Speaker 2: on Slate.

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Speaker 1: This is a good one.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, he's basically ringing the belly's saying, hey, guys,

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Speaker 2: there seems to be this movement toward looking at famines

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Speaker 2: as the result of dictatorships, which we'll get into super interesting,

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Speaker 2: but let's not forget something else. And it's a little

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Speaker 2: something called global climate change. Yeah, because I think from

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Speaker 2: Stearn's perspective, and he doesn't put this explicitly but he

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Speaker 2: basically says, yes, dictatorships can have this effect and have

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Speaker 2: had this effect. It's proven. But really, honestly, that's fairly

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Speaker 2: localized from a globalized perspective. Yeah, right, even if it

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Speaker 2: just happens in China, that's still technically local as far

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Speaker 2: as the globe is concerned. And that means that there's

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Speaker 2: other people around the globe that can help the people

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Speaker 2: in China or Ethiopia or Ireland or wherever a famine happens. Again. Yeah,

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Speaker 2: so we've got stuff in place, but if the entire

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Speaker 2: global food supply starts to become threatened by climate change,

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Speaker 2: then we're all toast, I think is ultimately the message

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Speaker 2: of what he's saying.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and he was kind of saying like he kind

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Speaker 1: of set it up really well throughout history and then said,

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Speaker 1: but nowadays, you know, things have never been better. There's

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Speaker 1: more food than ever, supply chain is more robust, so

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Speaker 1: like we shouldn't have anything to worry about right on

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Speaker 1: a global scale. And that's when he said, you know,

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Speaker 1: you might want to look at some of these studies.

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Speaker 1: And one of them, there was a report from the

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Speaker 1: UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and they said that

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Speaker 1: rising temperatures around the globe are cutting into global food supply.

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Speaker 1: I think to the point now where if it continues

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Speaker 1: at current levels, there could be a two percent cut

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Speaker 1: in crop harvests each decade moving forward. Yeah, and it

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Speaker 1: might not sound like a lot two percent a decade though,

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Speaker 1: but when you couple that with a rising population, that's

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Speaker 1: a problem. Especially like in the short term, you might think, oh, well,

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Speaker 1: you can grow more food more places if if it's warmer,

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Speaker 1: if things are melting. True in a lot of cases, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and certainly more CO two will increase yields in the

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Speaker 1: short term, but in the long term, warming trends will

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Speaker 1: make crops welt, especially near the tropics. I saw one

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Speaker 1: stat that said a three percent I'm sorry, three degree

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Speaker 1: celsius increase in temperature at the tropics could cut corn

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Speaker 1: crops by twenty percent. Wow, So it's you know, it's

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Speaker 1: a real threat.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, even without a massive temperature change like that

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Speaker 2: or an increase in CO two, one of the trademarks

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Speaker 2: of climate change is severe weather, which we're seeing more

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Speaker 2: and more, it seems, Yeah, too much rain, severe weather

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Speaker 2: is not enough rain good for crops. Yeah, yeah, or

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Speaker 2: either one over like a couple of year period, you're

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Speaker 2: not going to be able to grow crops, or you're

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Speaker 2: growing season is going to be shortened, or the whole

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Speaker 2: crop will just be wiped out right there at the end.

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Speaker 2: Who knows well.

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Speaker 1: And then the other thing you need to think about,

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Speaker 1: which he points out, is well, we can invent our

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Speaker 1: way out of this, like technology will take care of

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Speaker 1: it always. And the study from NASA there's a more

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Speaker 1: dire wind from NASA than even the UN one that

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Speaker 1: basically says we're screwed. And the NASA one says technological

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Speaker 1: change tends to raise both per capita resource consumption and

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Speaker 1: the scale of resource extraction, basically meaning it just is

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Speaker 1: sort of a net net, like we can't invent our

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Speaker 1: way out of.

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Speaker 2: It, right, Like it's net up till the point where

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Speaker 2: we run out of resources. Yes, then we're toast. Yes,

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Speaker 2: so there is a big threat from climate change. But

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Speaker 2: what Stern's saying is actually kind of retro to tell

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Speaker 2: you the truth, because up until the last couple decades,

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Speaker 2: everybody he looked at famine as strictly a natural disaster,

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Speaker 2: and it started to become increasingly apparent of what kind

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Speaker 2: of a man made disaster famine can be, especially when

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Speaker 2: people started to look at China's Great Famine back as

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Speaker 2: part of Mao's cultural revolution. So chuck China. I didn't

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Speaker 2: really realize this. I don't think I didn't know a

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Speaker 2: lot about it either. There's a something called when Mao

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Speaker 2: took over. When the Communists took over China in nineteen

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Speaker 2: forty nine, one of the things that Mao set his

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Speaker 2: sights on, Sherman Mauzi Dong, was that he wanted to

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Speaker 2: show the West just how great communism was, the same

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Speaker 2: dream of Stalin, But he also wanted to be the

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Speaker 2: top guy in the communist world too, so he was

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Speaker 2: very ambitious. And one of the ways to do that

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Speaker 2: was one of the same path that Stalin had followed,

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Speaker 2: which was, well, we've got a lot of agriculture here.

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Speaker 2: Let's use our agriculture to fund and finance industrialization. So

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Speaker 2: we're gonna shock the system. We're gonna take these old

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Speaker 2: agrarian backwards ways, we're gonna put them together in this

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Speaker 2: great communist way, and we're gonna squeeze as much productivity

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Speaker 2: out of them as we can. We're gonna funnel that

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Speaker 2: money into the workers in the cities. We're gonna make

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Speaker 2: China the glorious leader of the world, and we're going

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Speaker 2: to catch up to productivity to the productivity of the

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Speaker 2: UK or the US within ten years, five years, which

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Speaker 2: is insane.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's called the Great Leap Forward, and it was

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Speaker 1: a five year plan, which you're right it was. I

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Speaker 1: mean to call it ambitious. What it was was a

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Speaker 1: disaster in the making because what happened was, especially when

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Speaker 1: you live under someone like Malse Tongue, you're going to

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Speaker 1: have people that are afraid to tell the truth about

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Speaker 1: what's going on. So what happened from the very beginning

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Speaker 1: is officials, either driven fear or just because they were

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Speaker 1: so caught up in the movement, started exaggerating reports of

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Speaker 1: crop success, like they were literally reporting like three to

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Speaker 1: five times what they were really bringing in with their crops.

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Speaker 1: And then the authorities came along and basically took those

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Speaker 1: crops to the urban centers, killed off anyone who had

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Speaker 1: any opposition to this.

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Speaker 2: Well, I think they were also killed aff locally too,

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Speaker 2: Like if you were going to say, no, this guy's

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Speaker 2: lying about crop yields, Oh yeah, by the local people

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Speaker 2: would take care of you.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, you just disappear. And so what happened in nineteen

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Speaker 1: fifty eight, This is an actual quote. Malca Tongue said,

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Speaker 1: to distribute resources evenly will only ruin the great leap forward.

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Speaker 1: When there's not enough to eat, people starved to death,

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Speaker 1: it is better to let half the people die so

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Speaker 1: that the others can eat their fill. So this is there,

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Speaker 1: you have it, right.

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Speaker 2: It was very clearly a man made famine, like they

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Speaker 2: were aware of it, and you wonder, like, why were

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Speaker 2: they coming to grab the grain? Well, grain had turned

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Speaker 2: from something that people produced locally for basically local consumption,

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Speaker 2: into a national commodity that was used to feed these

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Speaker 2: workers and then to sell on the global market to

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Speaker 2: finance the glorious revolution. Right, So when grain was turned

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Speaker 2: into a commodity and people were given quotas to meet,

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Speaker 2: if you wanted to get ahead, you could just say, oh,

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Speaker 2: we had this great, great yield this year, so we've

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Speaker 2: got all this grain. And there were cases where the

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Speaker 2: Chinese government would come and requisition more grain than they

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Speaker 2: had then they'd even grown that yea, based on these

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Speaker 2: false reports. Right, So people started to starve. Clearly, Mao

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Speaker 2: had no problem with it because it was the people

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Speaker 2: out in the It was the farmers, not the workers

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Speaker 2: who were starving. And in three years. The lowest number

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Speaker 2: anyone's willing to say of the total number of people

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Speaker 2: who died in three years from this famine is fifteen

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Speaker 2: million people.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the lowest.

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Speaker 2: That's what the Chinese government itself officially says.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. I've seen numbers. I've seen a total population loss

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Speaker 1: and that means thirty five million deaths and forty million

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Speaker 1: people that weren't born because of all this. Oh yeah,

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Speaker 1: so a total population loss of seventy five million. And

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Speaker 1: it's still apparently, like I looked into it today, it

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Speaker 1: is very taboo to even talk about it today in China. Right,

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Speaker 1: And they don't call it a famine. They call it

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Speaker 1: three years of natural disaster or three years of difficulties.

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Speaker 2: Right, that's what they call it, capitalized. Yeah, yeah, that's

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Speaker 2: the title name.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, it's amazing.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and apparently the yeah, they don't talk about it.

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Speaker 2: It's not obviously not taught in schools. It's certainly not

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Speaker 2: taught as the result of a calamitous government policy, because

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Speaker 2: that same government, the Communist Party, is still in charge there.

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Speaker 2: But yeah, that was a huge enormous famine, and I

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Speaker 2: guess Skulship on that started to open people's eyes about

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Speaker 2: how human intervention could make a famine much much worse.

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Speaker 2: Same thing with Ethiopia as well. Ethiopia is almost famous

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Speaker 2: in a weird way for famines.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, they especially, like you said, if you grew up

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Speaker 1: in the eighties, it was sort of the face of

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Speaker 1: famine and drought was Ethiopia. And if you go back,

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Speaker 1: you know, back in time Prime Minister Melis Zenawi. This

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Speaker 1: was what more than twenty years ago at this point

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Speaker 1: that when I mentioned earlier what his vision for the country,

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Speaker 1: he said, you know, I hope in ten years that

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Speaker 1: Ethiopians will eat three times a day, and after twenty years,

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Speaker 1: not only are going to have enough food, but they're

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Speaker 1: gonna have the luxury of choosing what they eat. He

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Speaker 1: was in office for twenty one years before he died

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Speaker 1: in power and things these days aren't a whole lot better.

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Speaker 2: No, So, like I remember learning about Ethiopia and their famines,

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Speaker 2: and I just was thinking, like, wow, they must have

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Speaker 2: just the worst weather. They've got the worst luck with weather. Yeah,

436
00:25:09,960 --> 00:25:13,879
Speaker 2: it turns out no, they had the worst luck with governments. Yeah,

437
00:25:14,080 --> 00:25:18,320
Speaker 2: so they had a famine in nineteen seventy three that

438
00:25:18,400 --> 00:25:21,240
Speaker 2: the government basically just covered up.

439
00:25:21,520 --> 00:25:22,760
Speaker 1: Yeah, the Wallow Famine.

440
00:25:22,920 --> 00:25:27,640
Speaker 2: Yeah, and in that three hundred thousand people died. And

441
00:25:27,800 --> 00:25:30,959
Speaker 2: even though there were there was actually plenty of food.

442
00:25:32,000 --> 00:25:34,760
Speaker 2: The reason the famine had come along was because food

443
00:25:34,760 --> 00:25:39,520
Speaker 2: prices had increased just a little bit, but the people

444
00:25:39,560 --> 00:25:43,040
Speaker 2: in the Wallow region were so poor they couldn't afford

445
00:25:43,080 --> 00:25:44,840
Speaker 2: the food that was even available to them.

446
00:25:45,000 --> 00:25:47,680
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this is nineteen seventy three, the same year

447
00:25:48,440 --> 00:25:52,479
Speaker 1: that Emperor highly Selassie spent thirty five million dollars on

448
00:25:52,560 --> 00:25:56,600
Speaker 1: his eightieth birthday celebration, Right, so he's starting it's starting

449
00:25:56,600 --> 00:25:58,119
Speaker 1: to kind of become clear what's going on.

450
00:25:58,480 --> 00:26:01,119
Speaker 2: And then the very famous famine, famous here in the West,

451
00:26:01,240 --> 00:26:05,720
Speaker 2: the nineteen eighty three to eighty five famine. Everyone who

452
00:26:05,760 --> 00:26:08,360
Speaker 2: was funding that. That was when band Aid came out.

453
00:26:08,440 --> 00:26:11,720
Speaker 2: They had that do they know It's Christmas song? They

454
00:26:11,720 --> 00:26:14,879
Speaker 2: had the Live Aid concerts. Phil Collins flew in the

455
00:26:14,880 --> 00:26:18,480
Speaker 2: concord from London to Philadelphia to play two shows at

456
00:26:18,520 --> 00:26:19,120
Speaker 2: the same night.

457
00:26:19,240 --> 00:26:22,639
Speaker 1: Do you remember Live Aid? How old were you this

458
00:26:22,920 --> 00:26:24,000
Speaker 1: eight four? Yeah?

459
00:26:24,720 --> 00:26:25,280
Speaker 2: I was eight.

460
00:26:25,760 --> 00:26:27,520
Speaker 1: Do you remember it happening? Like, did you watch it?

461
00:26:28,280 --> 00:26:29,720
Speaker 2: I remember the Phil Collins thing.

462
00:26:30,640 --> 00:26:33,200
Speaker 1: Of course you do, because he loved Phil Collins. No,

463
00:26:33,320 --> 00:26:36,840
Speaker 1: I totally remember. I was babysitting at his summer gig,

464
00:26:37,119 --> 00:26:40,320
Speaker 1: a regular summer gig where would babysit these kids like

465
00:26:41,240 --> 00:26:44,119
Speaker 1: for half days, like you know, Monday through Friday. And

466
00:26:44,200 --> 00:26:47,359
Speaker 1: I was babysitting these kids, and we watched Live Aid

467
00:26:47,440 --> 00:26:51,480
Speaker 1: and I remember seeing, of course Phil Collins, and I

468
00:26:51,480 --> 00:26:56,120
Speaker 1: remember seeing the amazing performance by Queen like, oh, it's

469
00:26:56,160 --> 00:26:59,760
Speaker 1: still like one of their like hallmark performances. Was there

470
00:26:59,800 --> 00:27:03,360
Speaker 1: Live Aid? But yeah, it was like it was all

471
00:27:03,400 --> 00:27:05,879
Speaker 1: over the place USA for Africa. It was one of

472
00:27:05,920 --> 00:27:08,280
Speaker 1: the big causes because of this famine, right.

473
00:27:08,119 --> 00:27:10,200
Speaker 2: And it was great, like there was all these great

474
00:27:10,320 --> 00:27:13,320
Speaker 2: pictures of or not great picture, but there were pictures

475
00:27:13,359 --> 00:27:16,600
Speaker 2: spread far and wide that were waking up the West like, guys,

476
00:27:16,640 --> 00:27:19,480
Speaker 2: there's a huge problem. You got to give. And band

477
00:27:19,480 --> 00:27:22,359
Speaker 2: Aid and Live Aid raised one hundred and fifty million

478
00:27:22,440 --> 00:27:27,000
Speaker 2: dollars in nineteen eighty four for famine relief, and in

479
00:27:27,119 --> 00:27:31,919
Speaker 2: Ethiopia they had a significant impact. Yeah, but what no

480
00:27:31,960 --> 00:27:35,280
Speaker 2: one realized because the reporters were too lazy to report

481
00:27:35,320 --> 00:27:37,720
Speaker 2: and the government was doing a good job covering up.

482
00:27:38,119 --> 00:27:42,440
Speaker 2: This famine was not the direct result of a drought

483
00:27:42,760 --> 00:27:46,119
Speaker 2: or a crop failure. The government was actually fighting a

484
00:27:46,160 --> 00:27:50,960
Speaker 2: civil war secretly against the what the group that now

485
00:27:50,960 --> 00:27:56,280
Speaker 2: makes up Eritrea, Yeah, the eritrean ethnic group. Uh. And

486
00:27:56,560 --> 00:28:01,560
Speaker 2: the government was like naypalming the crop lands there, blowing

487
00:28:01,640 --> 00:28:07,720
Speaker 2: up cargo transports, blowing up farmers' markets, to affect the

488
00:28:07,760 --> 00:28:10,359
Speaker 2: food supply, and to create a famine. It was a

489
00:28:10,400 --> 00:28:11,480
Speaker 2: man made famine.

490
00:28:11,680 --> 00:28:13,600
Speaker 1: Yeah. And not only that, you know, I talked about

491
00:28:13,600 --> 00:28:16,879
Speaker 1: frivolous spending by the government. They spent that year in

492
00:28:18,040 --> 00:28:21,040
Speaker 1: I think nineteen eighty three, they spent between one hundred

493
00:28:21,080 --> 00:28:24,160
Speaker 1: million and two hundred million dollars to celebrate the tenth

494
00:28:24,200 --> 00:28:30,560
Speaker 1: anniversary of the revolution, almost up to two hundred million dollars.

495
00:28:30,760 --> 00:28:34,600
Speaker 2: So here's the thing. I'm reading this article from spin

496
00:28:34,760 --> 00:28:36,600
Speaker 2: I think it was written in nineteen eighty six, called

497
00:28:36,600 --> 00:28:40,960
Speaker 2: the Terrible Truth about band Aid. And so at the time,

498
00:28:41,080 --> 00:28:44,040
Speaker 2: there were a lot of aid groups working in Ethiopia,

499
00:28:44,480 --> 00:28:47,280
Speaker 2: and if you said anything about how the government was

500
00:28:47,320 --> 00:28:52,640
Speaker 2: taking this like aid money and using it for themselves

501
00:28:52,680 --> 00:28:56,560
Speaker 2: and not distributing it correctly, they were trying to put

502
00:28:56,760 --> 00:29:02,240
Speaker 2: tariffs and taxes on aid ship into the country just

503
00:29:02,240 --> 00:29:04,760
Speaker 2: to make money off of it. If you said anything,

504
00:29:05,040 --> 00:29:08,400
Speaker 2: your group would get kicked out. And apparently Medicine Songs

505
00:29:08,440 --> 00:29:12,840
Speaker 2: Frontier Doctors without Borders had raised the alarms and they

506
00:29:12,880 --> 00:29:15,160
Speaker 2: got kicked out of Ethiopia. And they went to Bob

507
00:29:15,200 --> 00:29:18,760
Speaker 2: Geldoff and said, hey, we know you have one hundred

508
00:29:18,800 --> 00:29:21,600
Speaker 2: and fifty million dollars that you're about to give to Ethiopia. Yeah,

509
00:29:21,640 --> 00:29:24,040
Speaker 2: let us tell you what's really going on there. Yeah,

510
00:29:24,200 --> 00:29:27,360
Speaker 2: and then you just wait until there's a stable government

511
00:29:27,440 --> 00:29:30,280
Speaker 2: to give it to. And he was like, no, it's fine,

512
00:29:30,320 --> 00:29:33,240
Speaker 2: it'll be fine. I'd rather work with these devils and

513
00:29:33,320 --> 00:29:36,120
Speaker 2: help these people out a little bit than just not

514
00:29:37,120 --> 00:29:40,600
Speaker 2: And a lot of people say that he he was

515
00:29:40,680 --> 00:29:43,120
Speaker 2: extremely reckless and basically just gave one hundred and fifty

516
00:29:43,200 --> 00:29:46,680
Speaker 2: million dollars to an autocratic government that was creating a

517
00:29:46,720 --> 00:29:47,920
Speaker 2: famine in its own country.

518
00:29:47,960 --> 00:29:48,800
Speaker 1: Is that a new article.

519
00:29:48,920 --> 00:29:50,240
Speaker 2: No, it's from nineteen eighty six.

520
00:29:50,400 --> 00:29:52,640
Speaker 1: Oh wow, all right, I need to check that out.

521
00:29:52,720 --> 00:29:55,640
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's called The Terrible Truth about Live or about

522
00:29:55,680 --> 00:29:56,240
Speaker 2: band Aid.

523
00:29:56,160 --> 00:29:58,720
Speaker 1: About band Aid. Yeah, well, there's a great book in

524
00:29:58,760 --> 00:30:02,120
Speaker 1: this same article reference that you sent a Nobel Prize

525
00:30:02,120 --> 00:30:05,600
Speaker 1: winning economist's name, Martya Senn wrote a book called Development

526
00:30:05,680 --> 00:30:08,120
Speaker 1: is Freedom and basically kind of backs up what we're

527
00:30:08,120 --> 00:30:13,680
Speaker 1: talking about. Sin says that, you know, authoritarian systems are

528
00:30:14,080 --> 00:30:16,520
Speaker 1: the ones who have famines. And they went back and

529
00:30:16,520 --> 00:30:20,320
Speaker 1: did a historical investigation and these are twenty century famines.

530
00:30:20,360 --> 00:30:23,600
Speaker 1: Thirty major famines that happened were all in countries led

531
00:30:23,600 --> 00:30:26,479
Speaker 1: by autocratic rule or that were under armed conflict at

532
00:30:26,480 --> 00:30:26,800
Speaker 1: the time.

533
00:30:27,120 --> 00:30:32,160
Speaker 2: Yeah. And this article from I wish I knew who

534
00:30:32,160 --> 00:30:34,200
Speaker 2: wrote it. I feel terrible, but it was in HuffPo,

535
00:30:34,920 --> 00:30:40,160
Speaker 2: So there you go. The author said, there's a country

536
00:30:40,240 --> 00:30:44,160
Speaker 2: right next to Ethiopia that has a lot of the

537
00:30:44,160 --> 00:30:48,280
Speaker 2: same weather, a lot of the same soil conditions, growing conditions,

538
00:30:48,320 --> 00:30:53,360
Speaker 2: crop land. Botswana. They said, Botswana is a democracy, Yes,

539
00:30:53,480 --> 00:30:55,440
Speaker 2: and it has been sixties. Yeah, it has been since

540
00:30:55,480 --> 00:30:58,400
Speaker 2: the sixties. And since it's been a democracy, it's never

541
00:30:58,480 --> 00:31:01,440
Speaker 2: had a famine. And it's right next door to Ethiopia.

542
00:31:01,480 --> 00:31:04,480
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, And the whole idea there is that if

543
00:31:04,840 --> 00:31:08,280
Speaker 1: resources were not being allocated properly, the people would have

544
00:31:08,320 --> 00:31:12,200
Speaker 1: a voice and change the people in power. But when

545
00:31:12,240 --> 00:31:17,280
Speaker 1: you're under autocratic rule, you're either completely squashed or so

546
00:31:17,400 --> 00:31:20,480
Speaker 1: disregarded that they don't care if you are dying. Basically,

547
00:31:20,680 --> 00:31:23,120
Speaker 1: they are in power and they can't do anything to

548
00:31:23,160 --> 00:31:23,480
Speaker 1: change it.

549
00:31:23,560 --> 00:31:26,440
Speaker 2: Right, They don't need your vote or your support because

550
00:31:26,440 --> 00:31:28,880
Speaker 2: they got a barrel of a gun at you. That's

551
00:31:28,880 --> 00:31:29,880
Speaker 2: how they stay in power.

552
00:31:30,080 --> 00:31:32,560
Speaker 1: Yeah. A group called Human Rights Watch, which is great.

553
00:31:32,600 --> 00:31:35,520
Speaker 1: I know we've talked about them before. In twenty ten,

554
00:31:35,600 --> 00:31:38,560
Speaker 1: they did a report called Development Without Freedom How AID

555
00:31:38,640 --> 00:31:42,400
Speaker 1: underwrites repression in Ethiopia, and it just completely confirms all

556
00:31:42,440 --> 00:31:45,400
Speaker 1: of this. Yeah, that's just it's suppression of a people

557
00:31:46,040 --> 00:31:49,000
Speaker 1: and watching them die and not caring.

558
00:31:49,080 --> 00:31:51,840
Speaker 2: And it's still going on. So let's take another break

559
00:31:51,880 --> 00:31:54,000
Speaker 2: and then we'll talk about Ireland and then we'll talk

560
00:31:54,000 --> 00:32:30,120
Speaker 2: about how to combat famines. So, Chuck, I think when

561
00:32:30,120 --> 00:32:33,480
Speaker 2: most people think of famine, they think, if not of Ethiopia,

562
00:32:33,520 --> 00:32:36,320
Speaker 2: then of Ireland, because Ireland had one heck of a

563
00:32:36,360 --> 00:32:40,760
Speaker 2: famous famine back in the nineteenth century that actually created

564
00:32:41,080 --> 00:32:44,640
Speaker 2: Ireland and the Irish as we know him today.

565
00:32:45,440 --> 00:32:51,240
Speaker 1: Yeah, the Irish potato famine are cohorts our colleagues, Tracy

566
00:32:51,280 --> 00:32:53,080
Speaker 1: and Hollyott. Stuff you miss in history class?

567
00:32:53,080 --> 00:32:54,080
Speaker 2: Do they do one on it? Yeah?

568
00:32:54,080 --> 00:32:56,200
Speaker 1: I did a great episode just on this. I recommend

569
00:32:56,240 --> 00:33:03,040
Speaker 1: listening to that. But here's our knuckleheaded overview. This was

570
00:33:03,480 --> 00:33:05,520
Speaker 1: also called the Great Irish Famine and their famine of

571
00:33:05,560 --> 00:33:09,000
Speaker 1: eighteen forty five to forty nine, because that's when it happened.

572
00:33:10,320 --> 00:33:13,440
Speaker 1: This was one of the ones that initially was caused

573
00:33:14,000 --> 00:33:20,720
Speaker 1: by disease it's called late blight, and it basically destroyed

574
00:33:22,000 --> 00:33:23,400
Speaker 1: kind of every part of the potato.

575
00:33:24,240 --> 00:33:26,760
Speaker 2: Yeah, the leaves, the roots, which I mean, if you're

576
00:33:26,760 --> 00:33:29,160
Speaker 2: eating a potato, the root is what you're after. Sure,

577
00:33:29,960 --> 00:33:34,440
Speaker 2: they had a I guess a cold, rainy spring.

578
00:33:34,720 --> 00:33:37,640
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's kind of a perfect storm of bad luck.

579
00:33:37,600 --> 00:33:41,280
Speaker 2: Right, and this microbe showed up from North America accidentally,

580
00:33:41,320 --> 00:33:43,520
Speaker 2: from what we understand. Yeah, and so there were three

581
00:33:44,240 --> 00:33:49,080
Speaker 2: successive years of dead crops. And one of the reasons

582
00:33:49,120 --> 00:33:51,800
Speaker 2: why this had such an impact is that by this time,

583
00:33:51,880 --> 00:33:54,600
Speaker 2: by the middle of the nineteenth century in Ireland, there

584
00:33:54,600 --> 00:33:59,360
Speaker 2: were a lot of Irish farmers who were basically subsistence farmers.

585
00:33:59,480 --> 00:34:02,640
Speaker 2: A lot of farmers in Ireland were small, small land

586
00:34:02,640 --> 00:34:06,760
Speaker 2: farmers who were tenant farmers, which means they work the

587
00:34:06,880 --> 00:34:09,800
Speaker 2: land and they had to give up a substantial amount

588
00:34:09,840 --> 00:34:13,200
Speaker 2: of their crop yield, in this case to Great Britain,

589
00:34:13,880 --> 00:34:17,120
Speaker 2: which held Ireland under colonial rule at the time. Yes,

590
00:34:17,120 --> 00:34:18,800
Speaker 2: and they could keep a little bit for themselves to

591
00:34:18,880 --> 00:34:20,960
Speaker 2: keep their family alive, so they could come out and

592
00:34:21,000 --> 00:34:23,960
Speaker 2: work the fields for another day. Right. Yeah, most of

593
00:34:24,000 --> 00:34:27,919
Speaker 2: those people depended almost exclusively on potatoes.

594
00:34:28,320 --> 00:34:31,400
Speaker 1: Yeah, not only for income, but like what they ate

595
00:34:31,640 --> 00:34:34,880
Speaker 1: on a daily basis exactly so for their nutrition. And

596
00:34:34,920 --> 00:34:37,799
Speaker 1: not only that, but they they had whittled it down

597
00:34:37,960 --> 00:34:40,120
Speaker 1: to just a couple of varieties of potato.

598
00:34:40,680 --> 00:34:42,080
Speaker 2: It's like the problem with quem wa.

599
00:34:42,640 --> 00:34:47,160
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like that's bad news if disease strikes or

600
00:34:47,280 --> 00:34:49,520
Speaker 1: blight or something like that. If you've got just a

601
00:34:49,560 --> 00:34:51,920
Speaker 1: couple of varieties and you're dependent on that as a nation.

602
00:34:51,880 --> 00:34:53,920
Speaker 2: And they're both susceptible to that blight.

603
00:34:53,760 --> 00:34:57,480
Speaker 1: Yeah, then you're screwed. Right, And that's exactly what happened. Yeah,

604
00:34:57,560 --> 00:34:59,600
Speaker 1: it said in the early eighteen forties, almost half the

605
00:34:59,600 --> 00:35:05,440
Speaker 1: Iris population depended almost exclusively on the potato for diet,

606
00:35:05,800 --> 00:35:10,840
Speaker 1: and especially the rural poor farmers. And in eighteen forty

607
00:35:10,840 --> 00:35:15,759
Speaker 1: five that that strain it was called fido fido thora.

608
00:35:17,280 --> 00:35:18,680
Speaker 1: I think so, I think there's got to be some

609
00:35:18,719 --> 00:35:20,480
Speaker 1: silent letters in there.

610
00:35:20,360 --> 00:35:22,440
Speaker 2: There's a lot of continents strung.

611
00:35:22,200 --> 00:35:27,640
Speaker 1: Together, and like you said, that came from North America

612
00:35:27,760 --> 00:35:32,560
Speaker 1: and everything just rotted. And this was the natural part

613
00:35:32,600 --> 00:35:35,840
Speaker 1: of it. So then you have England, the controlling body

614
00:35:37,560 --> 00:35:41,120
Speaker 1: like needs to step in and do something, and they

615
00:35:41,480 --> 00:35:45,160
Speaker 1: kind of did, but not to chin up.

616
00:35:44,600 --> 00:35:46,799
Speaker 2: Yeah, keep that grain coming our way.

617
00:35:47,440 --> 00:35:49,879
Speaker 1: Yeah, there was a Prime minister named Sir Robert Peel

618
00:35:49,960 --> 00:35:53,000
Speaker 1: and he he provided a little bit of relief. He

619
00:35:53,080 --> 00:35:56,560
Speaker 1: authorized import of corn from the United States. It helped

620
00:35:56,560 --> 00:35:59,280
Speaker 1: avoid a little bit of starvation, but it was certainly

621
00:35:59,320 --> 00:35:59,960
Speaker 1: not a problem.

622
00:36:00,560 --> 00:36:04,239
Speaker 2: No, And again they really did say, we're sorry you're

623
00:36:04,280 --> 00:36:06,080
Speaker 2: having these troubles. We'll see what we can do, but

624
00:36:06,360 --> 00:36:09,319
Speaker 2: keep those grain imports coming, because just like in the

625
00:36:09,800 --> 00:36:14,640
Speaker 2: Wallow famine in Ethiopia, there were plenty of places in

626
00:36:14,680 --> 00:36:19,120
Speaker 2: Ireland where there was grain in abundance, but the people

627
00:36:19,200 --> 00:36:23,360
Speaker 2: growing the grain couldn't afford it. Yes, And so because

628
00:36:24,120 --> 00:36:28,400
Speaker 2: the people elsewhere were having problems with the potato crop,

629
00:36:29,120 --> 00:36:32,160
Speaker 2: the price of food was going through the roof because

630
00:36:32,200 --> 00:36:35,680
Speaker 2: there was less food overall, and the people back in

631
00:36:35,719 --> 00:36:39,400
Speaker 2: Great Britain still typically had money to pay for this food,

632
00:36:39,640 --> 00:36:42,359
Speaker 2: so they were exporting the stuff out of Ireland during

633
00:36:42,360 --> 00:36:46,760
Speaker 2: a famine for their own consumption, including live stock which

634
00:36:47,440 --> 00:36:51,800
Speaker 2: must be fed that grain. So to add insult to injury,

635
00:36:51,880 --> 00:36:54,600
Speaker 2: they were saying, you guys are starving over there. Keep

636
00:36:54,640 --> 00:36:57,040
Speaker 2: exporting that grain, but feed some of it to your

637
00:36:57,040 --> 00:36:59,440
Speaker 2: live stock, and then export the live stock to us

638
00:36:59,480 --> 00:36:59,759
Speaker 2: to eat.

639
00:37:00,640 --> 00:37:03,560
Speaker 1: Well. Yeah, and not only that, it was just so compounded.

640
00:37:03,600 --> 00:37:06,399
Speaker 1: It's just like so frustrating to look at, like through

641
00:37:06,440 --> 00:37:08,840
Speaker 1: a modern lens of like things that they could have

642
00:37:08,840 --> 00:37:13,239
Speaker 1: done differently. But these poor farmers, like you said that

643
00:37:13,280 --> 00:37:15,279
Speaker 1: they were farming a lot of time on farms owned

644
00:37:15,280 --> 00:37:19,160
Speaker 1: by British absentee landowners. They couldn't farm all of a sudden,

645
00:37:19,200 --> 00:37:21,319
Speaker 1: so they weren't getting paid. So then they in turn

646
00:37:21,360 --> 00:37:25,719
Speaker 1: couldn't pay rent back to the landowners, and so they

647
00:37:25,719 --> 00:37:29,160
Speaker 1: were basically evicted. Hundreds of thousands of tenant farmers were

648
00:37:29,160 --> 00:37:33,879
Speaker 1: evicted under these years, and there was in eighteen thirty four,

649
00:37:33,960 --> 00:37:36,480
Speaker 1: there was something called the British Poor Law enacted in

650
00:37:36,520 --> 00:37:39,719
Speaker 1: eighteen thirty eight in Ireland that said able bodied indigens

651
00:37:40,480 --> 00:37:44,400
Speaker 1: were sent to a workhouse rather than given relief. So

652
00:37:45,280 --> 00:37:47,520
Speaker 1: now you're sent to a workhouse, you're not even like

653
00:37:47,640 --> 00:37:49,480
Speaker 1: farming the land that you lived on to provide for

654
00:37:49,520 --> 00:37:50,279
Speaker 1: your family, right.

655
00:37:50,200 --> 00:37:53,719
Speaker 2: Which is a terrible, terrible move in any famine. Part

656
00:37:53,760 --> 00:37:56,880
Speaker 2: of the spiral that spiral out of control of famine

657
00:37:56,920 --> 00:38:01,400
Speaker 2: is something called livelihood shock, when farmers who can still

658
00:38:02,040 --> 00:38:09,120
Speaker 2: conceivably grow food get priced out of their own crop

659
00:38:09,200 --> 00:38:13,280
Speaker 2: land and they can't afford to work any longer. Your

660
00:38:13,520 --> 00:38:16,960
Speaker 2: food supply is taking a further hit, which you should

661
00:38:17,040 --> 00:38:20,160
Speaker 2: not allow to happen. But the British government definitely did

662
00:38:20,239 --> 00:38:23,320
Speaker 2: allow it to happen. The guy who came after John

663
00:38:23,400 --> 00:38:28,200
Speaker 2: Peel or Robert Peel, not John Peel. The guy who

664
00:38:28,239 --> 00:38:32,359
Speaker 2: came after Robert Peel, Lord John Russell, he did even

665
00:38:32,440 --> 00:38:36,840
Speaker 2: less than Peel did, basically kicked it back to Ireland

666
00:38:36,880 --> 00:38:40,880
Speaker 2: to deal with. But still give us your export that

667
00:38:40,960 --> 00:38:42,719
Speaker 2: grain to us and we'll just leave it to the

668
00:38:42,760 --> 00:38:46,920
Speaker 2: free markets. If you ever leave dealing with the famine

669
00:38:46,960 --> 00:38:50,680
Speaker 2: to the markets to hammer out, you have abdicated all

670
00:38:50,760 --> 00:38:55,360
Speaker 2: responsibility for dealing with that famine. That's not okay. The

671
00:38:55,400 --> 00:38:58,880
Speaker 2: markets aren't equipped to deal with the famine. The famine

672
00:38:58,880 --> 00:39:00,880
Speaker 2: happens when the market's break down.

673
00:39:00,960 --> 00:39:04,560
Speaker 1: Right, and you need assistance to correct that right, it

674
00:39:04,600 --> 00:39:09,760
Speaker 1: doesn't just work itself out. So you know, Ireland already

675
00:39:09,960 --> 00:39:12,440
Speaker 1: is not so happy to be under the thumb of

676
00:39:13,280 --> 00:39:17,239
Speaker 1: the British. This got even worse when there was this

677
00:39:17,280 --> 00:39:21,920
Speaker 1: sort of attitude among sort of the elite of England

678
00:39:21,960 --> 00:39:25,000
Speaker 1: that you know what this is, This is really just

679
00:39:25,000 --> 00:39:27,440
Speaker 1: a sort of a correction because you know, those Irish

680
00:39:27,719 --> 00:39:29,839
Speaker 1: all they do is have children, and there are far

681
00:39:29,880 --> 00:39:32,680
Speaker 1: too many of them anyway, these poor Irish people have

682
00:39:32,840 --> 00:39:35,480
Speaker 1: ten kids, so this is sort of a necessary correction

683
00:39:36,560 --> 00:39:37,239
Speaker 1: in the long run.

684
00:39:37,320 --> 00:39:39,640
Speaker 2: Yeah. Apparently at the time that was a bit of

685
00:39:39,920 --> 00:39:42,800
Speaker 2: the mentality of the intellectuals of England.

686
00:39:43,080 --> 00:39:45,480
Speaker 1: Yeah, so that's not going to do yourself any favors

687
00:39:45,480 --> 00:39:46,440
Speaker 1: as far as getting along.

688
00:39:46,800 --> 00:39:50,520
Speaker 2: No, And one of the other things that happened was

689
00:39:50,680 --> 00:39:54,760
Speaker 2: a consolidation of wealth. Like all of those small farms

690
00:39:54,800 --> 00:39:57,640
Speaker 2: that were that people were getting kicked off of because

691
00:39:57,680 --> 00:40:01,640
Speaker 2: they couldn't pay their rent. There landlords couldn't afford the

692
00:40:01,640 --> 00:40:04,759
Speaker 2: farms any longer either because they weren't able to collect rent, right,

693
00:40:04,840 --> 00:40:08,319
Speaker 2: and so wealthier landowners said, I'll buy your farm and

694
00:40:08,360 --> 00:40:10,840
Speaker 2: your farm, and your farm and your farm and your farming. Here,

695
00:40:11,000 --> 00:40:12,920
Speaker 2: go buy some corn. You can get it from the

696
00:40:12,960 --> 00:40:14,920
Speaker 2: soup kitchen over here, and then they put it together.

697
00:40:14,960 --> 00:40:18,120
Speaker 2: So these small farms that formed these communities now were

698
00:40:18,160 --> 00:40:22,200
Speaker 2: single large farms owned by single wealthy landowners. As a result,

699
00:40:22,400 --> 00:40:25,040
Speaker 2: it's kind of like that saying, if there's blood in

700
00:40:25,080 --> 00:40:27,800
Speaker 2: the streets by real estate, right, that's what those guys

701
00:40:27,800 --> 00:40:29,640
Speaker 2: were doing. Yeah, not cool.

702
00:40:29,840 --> 00:40:32,880
Speaker 1: So in the end, this had a huge effect on

703
00:40:32,960 --> 00:40:35,720
Speaker 1: the I mean, the way they put in this article.

704
00:40:35,760 --> 00:40:40,640
Speaker 1: The demographic history of Ireland directly calls from the famine.

705
00:40:40,640 --> 00:40:44,120
Speaker 1: Their population of about eight point four million in eighteen

706
00:40:44,760 --> 00:40:48,600
Speaker 1: sorry eighteen forty four fell to six point six million

707
00:40:49,840 --> 00:40:54,839
Speaker 1: just seven years later, and about a million people died

708
00:40:55,120 --> 00:40:58,800
Speaker 1: literally just died from starvation. And by the time Ireland

709
00:40:58,840 --> 00:41:02,200
Speaker 1: achieved independence in night ten twenty one in nineteen twenty one,

710
00:41:02,280 --> 00:41:05,239
Speaker 1: the population was barely half of what it was in

711
00:41:05,239 --> 00:41:08,080
Speaker 1: the early eighteen forties. Yeah, because then that's not supposed

712
00:41:08,120 --> 00:41:08,520
Speaker 1: to happen.

713
00:41:08,800 --> 00:41:13,600
Speaker 2: Death and immigration, Yeah, how many people? Uh? Another two

714
00:41:13,760 --> 00:41:16,279
Speaker 2: I think a million died and another two million emigrated

715
00:41:16,320 --> 00:41:16,920
Speaker 2: as a result.

716
00:41:17,200 --> 00:41:19,240
Speaker 1: Yeah. New York City, baby.

717
00:41:19,120 --> 00:41:20,680
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's how New York got to be in New

718
00:41:20,760 --> 00:41:25,719
Speaker 2: York yep. So we've got we've got a pretty good

719
00:41:25,760 --> 00:41:28,440
Speaker 2: idea of what famines are, how they happen. There is

720
00:41:28,480 --> 00:41:30,759
Speaker 2: still that struggle between how much of it is man

721
00:41:30,840 --> 00:41:33,120
Speaker 2: made how much of it is natural. I think it's

722
00:41:33,160 --> 00:41:36,360
Speaker 2: a combination of the two at this time. Sure, but

723
00:41:36,520 --> 00:41:39,240
Speaker 2: how do you prevent something like a famine, Chuck.

724
00:41:39,920 --> 00:41:47,440
Speaker 1: Well, there's a lot of controversy, and there's a lot

725
00:41:47,440 --> 00:41:49,920
Speaker 1: of controversy surrounding it, and a lot of people rightfully

726
00:41:49,960 --> 00:41:54,160
Speaker 1: are saying that even AID groups, like what we're doing

727
00:41:54,239 --> 00:41:56,160
Speaker 1: is putting a band aid on something, and they're not

728
00:41:57,120 --> 00:41:59,680
Speaker 1: like getting to the root of some of these problems.

729
00:42:00,040 --> 00:42:02,440
Speaker 1: And aid is great, you know, it's keeping people alive.

730
00:42:02,920 --> 00:42:05,320
Speaker 1: I'm not saying don't do that, but it's not addressing

731
00:42:05,320 --> 00:42:06,719
Speaker 1: the real problems.

732
00:42:06,400 --> 00:42:09,520
Speaker 2: Right And apparently the real problems are autocratic rule.

733
00:42:10,280 --> 00:42:13,160
Speaker 1: Well one of them for sure, Yeah. Yeah. Another one

734
00:42:13,239 --> 00:42:16,960
Speaker 1: is you know, just food education. There are food for

735
00:42:17,040 --> 00:42:20,040
Speaker 1: work programs which apparently are working out pretty good, so

736
00:42:20,040 --> 00:42:22,560
Speaker 1: they'll have you know, I think they will deliver some

737
00:42:22,600 --> 00:42:25,080
Speaker 1: food aid to get people able bodied enough to work

738
00:42:25,640 --> 00:42:29,799
Speaker 1: and then try and get people working on infrastructure jobs

739
00:42:29,840 --> 00:42:30,800
Speaker 1: in the country.

740
00:42:31,239 --> 00:42:32,560
Speaker 2: In exchange for food.

741
00:42:32,600 --> 00:42:35,720
Speaker 1: Yeah, in exchange for food, and I would imagine money,

742
00:42:35,719 --> 00:42:37,600
Speaker 1: I don't know that for sure, but I don't think

743
00:42:37,600 --> 00:42:38,480
Speaker 1: it's straight up food.

744
00:42:38,760 --> 00:42:42,040
Speaker 2: I wonder if like, yeah, I wonder.

745
00:42:41,840 --> 00:42:43,520
Speaker 1: Maybe it seems like it'ld be a combination of the

746
00:42:43,560 --> 00:42:45,200
Speaker 1: two or maybe not. I don't know.

747
00:42:45,880 --> 00:42:51,200
Speaker 2: Another one is hashing out early warning signs lackly. They

748
00:42:51,200 --> 00:42:57,840
Speaker 2: have different scales now of food security to kind of

749
00:42:57,920 --> 00:43:01,960
Speaker 2: gauge where a country is is far as it's spiral

750
00:43:02,080 --> 00:43:02,960
Speaker 2: towards famine.

751
00:43:03,080 --> 00:43:06,080
Speaker 1: Yeah, like don't wait till you're seeing the UNISEF commercial

752
00:43:06,840 --> 00:43:07,759
Speaker 1: right before you act.

753
00:43:07,880 --> 00:43:11,520
Speaker 2: But not only that, you government of this, the people

754
00:43:11,600 --> 00:43:13,799
Speaker 2: that are about to enter into a famine, you need

755
00:43:13,840 --> 00:43:17,600
Speaker 2: to do certain things, like there's a famine that is

756
00:43:18,440 --> 00:43:20,600
Speaker 2: I believe Ethiopia is on the verge of another one

757
00:43:20,640 --> 00:43:23,840
Speaker 2: again right now. And part of the problem is the

758
00:43:23,920 --> 00:43:27,480
Speaker 2: government denied that this was that this was happening, that

759
00:43:27,520 --> 00:43:29,000
Speaker 2: there was going to be a famine. They said, we

760
00:43:29,040 --> 00:43:32,520
Speaker 2: have food security, yeah, and they the author of that

761
00:43:32,560 --> 00:43:35,200
Speaker 2: huff Po article pointed out, no, there's plenty of food,

762
00:43:35,239 --> 00:43:37,960
Speaker 2: but it's too expensive in a lot of places, so

763
00:43:38,000 --> 00:43:40,759
Speaker 2: that's not food security. And they didn't do enough, like

764
00:43:40,800 --> 00:43:45,760
Speaker 2: they didn't tell cattle herders to move their their herds

765
00:43:45,840 --> 00:43:49,960
Speaker 2: closer to like reliable water sources. They didn't. There's steps

766
00:43:50,000 --> 00:43:53,120
Speaker 2: and actions that governments that care about their people or

767
00:43:53,160 --> 00:43:57,759
Speaker 2: care at least about the food supply can take. And

768
00:43:57,960 --> 00:44:00,680
Speaker 2: there are early warning signs and apparently they are born

769
00:44:00,840 --> 00:44:04,480
Speaker 2: out of famine codes from nineteenth century India.

770
00:44:04,640 --> 00:44:05,839
Speaker 1: Oh really, India.

771
00:44:05,520 --> 00:44:07,799
Speaker 2: Had a string of famines in the nineteenth century that

772
00:44:07,880 --> 00:44:10,840
Speaker 2: killed like seventeen million people. Yeah, so they really started

773
00:44:10,880 --> 00:44:13,640
Speaker 2: to pay attention to what made up the warning signs

774
00:44:13,640 --> 00:44:14,920
Speaker 2: of famine.

775
00:44:15,239 --> 00:44:17,439
Speaker 1: Well, there is something it was created in nineteen eighty

776
00:44:17,440 --> 00:44:18,879
Speaker 1: five and it may have been based on what you're

777
00:44:18,880 --> 00:44:22,200
Speaker 1: talking about, called the Famine Early Warning Systems Network, and

778
00:44:22,239 --> 00:44:27,080
Speaker 1: they monitor these trends and food prices, food security and

779
00:44:27,160 --> 00:44:30,080
Speaker 1: basically you can compare it to other years, other areas

780
00:44:30,719 --> 00:44:32,799
Speaker 1: and right now, because I want to see like kind

781
00:44:32,800 --> 00:44:35,400
Speaker 1: of what the current state of the world was, there

782
00:44:35,480 --> 00:44:41,680
Speaker 1: is a global alert. Emergency food assistant needs needs are

783
00:44:41,760 --> 00:44:47,239
Speaker 1: unprecedented in these four areas right now. Nigeria, Yemen, South

784
00:44:47,280 --> 00:44:50,920
Speaker 1: Sudan and Somalia are the most of the areas of

785
00:44:50,920 --> 00:44:55,360
Speaker 1: the highest concern and it has the reasons of concern

786
00:44:55,440 --> 00:45:00,920
Speaker 1: right here Nigeria, the Boco Harem conflict, so there you

787
00:45:00,960 --> 00:45:01,440
Speaker 1: have it right.

788
00:45:01,480 --> 00:45:04,960
Speaker 2: Yeah, it doesn't have to be a dictatorship being lazy.

789
00:45:05,000 --> 00:45:06,920
Speaker 2: You can be in the middle of a war torn

790
00:45:07,040 --> 00:45:10,799
Speaker 2: country and people aren't growing crops like they normally do

791
00:45:10,840 --> 00:45:11,879
Speaker 2: when a war is not on.

792
00:45:12,120 --> 00:45:15,560
Speaker 1: So there's one. In Yemen, extensive conflict has reduced incomes

793
00:45:15,600 --> 00:45:22,200
Speaker 1: and food prices remain elevated. South Sudan conflict severely disrupted trade,

794
00:45:22,280 --> 00:45:27,239
Speaker 1: humanitarian access, and livelihoods. Then finally Somalia. Somalia was the

795
00:45:27,239 --> 00:45:30,440
Speaker 1: only one of the four that seemed like it was

796
00:45:31,320 --> 00:45:35,400
Speaker 1: weather related, and it said that the December on as

797
00:45:35,520 --> 00:45:38,920
Speaker 1: pronounced the eyr season. There are two rainy seasons, the

798
00:45:39,360 --> 00:45:43,239
Speaker 1: goose season and the day or deer deer season, and

799
00:45:43,400 --> 00:45:46,680
Speaker 1: apparently they've both been below average. So it looks like

800
00:45:46,719 --> 00:45:51,800
Speaker 1: in Somalia it's due to rainfall, but elsewhere it's you know, conflict, conflict, conflict.

801
00:45:51,920 --> 00:45:53,839
Speaker 2: So if you care, if you want to help, if

802
00:45:53,880 --> 00:45:58,120
Speaker 2: you want to make a difference, look around, do your research,

803
00:45:58,480 --> 00:46:01,520
Speaker 2: find an a group that you feel good about, and

804
00:46:02,440 --> 00:46:06,040
Speaker 2: give money, give time, do something. Don't just sit back

805
00:46:06,080 --> 00:46:08,680
Speaker 2: and eat your big mac and forget about the whole thing.

806
00:46:08,840 --> 00:46:09,200
Speaker 1: Agreed.

807
00:46:09,640 --> 00:46:11,319
Speaker 2: If you want to know more about famine, you can

808
00:46:11,360 --> 00:46:13,479
Speaker 2: type that word in the search bar at howstuff works

809
00:46:13,520 --> 00:46:15,759
Speaker 2: dot com. Since I said search par it's time for

810
00:46:15,800 --> 00:46:16,880
Speaker 2: a listener, mayil.

811
00:46:18,560 --> 00:46:21,560
Speaker 1: I think this one Trump's homelessness. Surely we won't get

812
00:46:21,600 --> 00:46:25,719
Speaker 1: an email saying that people deserve children deserve to die

813
00:46:25,760 --> 00:46:26,520
Speaker 1: every four seconds.

814
00:46:26,560 --> 00:46:28,839
Speaker 2: I don't know if we do, we'll get they'll all

815
00:46:28,880 --> 00:46:30,879
Speaker 2: start with I believe in a vengeful God.

816
00:46:32,640 --> 00:46:35,560
Speaker 1: All right, I'm gonna call this one. Whatever happened to

817
00:46:35,600 --> 00:46:37,880
Speaker 1: super fan Sarah? Remember that?

818
00:46:37,960 --> 00:46:41,160
Speaker 2: Mm hm? I remember Sarah Sparrow, the amazing twelve year

819
00:46:41,200 --> 00:46:41,800
Speaker 2: old fan.

820
00:46:41,719 --> 00:46:45,000
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, So I listened to several podcasts per day, guys,

821
00:46:45,840 --> 00:46:47,880
Speaker 1: to learn something and to drown out the buzz of

822
00:46:47,920 --> 00:46:50,000
Speaker 1: the office I work in. I was going through so

823
00:46:50,040 --> 00:46:52,360
Speaker 1: many that I had caught up to the President, forcing

824
00:46:52,400 --> 00:46:55,560
Speaker 1: me to dig way back to the archive instead of

825
00:46:55,560 --> 00:46:58,520
Speaker 1: waiting for the newest one. So he's sandwiching, right, That's fun,

826
00:46:58,719 --> 00:47:00,320
Speaker 1: Just the way to do it. The end of the

827
00:47:00,360 --> 00:47:06,440
Speaker 1: podcast in twenty ten about grandfather's diets shortening our lives fascinating.

828
00:47:06,480 --> 00:47:09,000
Speaker 1: By the way, this is June twenty ten. You got

829
00:47:09,040 --> 00:47:11,440
Speaker 1: the email from Sarah, who had been listening to the

830
00:47:11,440 --> 00:47:15,800
Speaker 1: show since she was eleven. At the time she was thirteen,

831
00:47:15,920 --> 00:47:18,160
Speaker 1: you mentioned you should go to our high school graduation

832
00:47:18,280 --> 00:47:20,880
Speaker 1: be the keynote speaker. You were still doing this well

833
00:47:21,280 --> 00:47:26,080
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen. My math is right. Then Sarah is twenty

834
00:47:26,160 --> 00:47:28,680
Speaker 1: years old. That's crazy and halfway through college.

835
00:47:29,040 --> 00:47:30,000
Speaker 2: It's so crazy.

836
00:47:30,040 --> 00:47:32,759
Speaker 1: So I hope you guys don't feel too old. But

837
00:47:32,840 --> 00:47:35,840
Speaker 1: I think is an exceptional accomplishment. You're still doing the show.

838
00:47:36,080 --> 00:47:38,120
Speaker 1: You're more popular than ever. Keep up the good work.

839
00:47:38,239 --> 00:47:41,640
Speaker 1: Josh Taylor and Josh you know he asked about Sarah.

840
00:47:41,800 --> 00:47:44,000
Speaker 1: Sadly we haven't heard from Sarah in years.

841
00:47:44,120 --> 00:47:46,480
Speaker 2: Were like the giving tree, we got ditched.

842
00:47:46,480 --> 00:47:50,319
Speaker 1: She ditched us, and or she just you know, still

843
00:47:50,320 --> 00:47:51,400
Speaker 1: listens and doesn't write.

844
00:47:51,239 --> 00:47:53,160
Speaker 2: In right, it's plainly cool.

845
00:47:53,560 --> 00:47:56,040
Speaker 1: Maybe so well she is, you know, twenty years old, right,

846
00:47:56,080 --> 00:47:59,279
Speaker 1: it's not super cool to still be the Sarah the

847
00:47:59,320 --> 00:48:01,359
Speaker 1: amazing seven for eleven year old man.

848
00:48:01,640 --> 00:48:03,480
Speaker 2: You're smelly old pseudo uncles.

849
00:48:03,680 --> 00:48:07,960
Speaker 1: But Sarah, if you were out there, hit us up, yeah,

850
00:48:08,040 --> 00:48:10,600
Speaker 1: say hi, send us an email. We would love, love

851
00:48:10,800 --> 00:48:11,640
Speaker 1: love to hear from you.

852
00:48:11,760 --> 00:48:15,080
Speaker 2: Yeah, well even guaranteed read it on the air.

853
00:48:14,960 --> 00:48:16,840
Speaker 1: And you know what that goes for you too, Sam,

854
00:48:17,400 --> 00:48:21,719
Speaker 1: who is in College Summer of Sam Sam. So all

855
00:48:21,760 --> 00:48:24,200
Speaker 1: of our younger listeners, like, they grow up and they

856
00:48:24,239 --> 00:48:24,920
Speaker 1: forget about it.

857
00:48:24,920 --> 00:48:27,880
Speaker 2: It's true, so sad, but then they turn like forty

858
00:48:27,880 --> 00:48:32,239
Speaker 2: to fifty and they'll come back. They'll be back. Well,

859
00:48:32,239 --> 00:48:33,759
Speaker 2: if you want to get in touch with this for

860
00:48:33,800 --> 00:48:35,920
Speaker 2: a while, make us feel pretty good and then forget

861
00:48:35,960 --> 00:48:37,920
Speaker 2: about us, you can send us an email to Stuff

862
00:48:37,960 --> 00:48:40,879
Speaker 2: podcast at house. Stuffworks dot com and has always joined

863
00:48:40,960 --> 00:48:43,040
Speaker 2: us at our home on the web, Stuff Youshould Know

864
00:48:43,120 --> 00:48:46,520
Speaker 2: dot com.

865
00:48:46,640 --> 00:48:49,520
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For

866
00:48:49,600 --> 00:48:53,799
Speaker 1: more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

867
00:48:53,920 --> 00:49:00,840
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.