Speaker 1: We'll all miss Jim, but he was delicious. It's one more.
Speaker 2: Thing this was going. That's right, Wow, just the way
Speaker 2: Joe Biden's great uncle died or something.
Speaker 1: Like that, right right, one of the many crack potteries
Speaker 1: in the last two years or so, Joe Biden's rule
Speaker 1: that we can all remember fondly. So I've been sitting
Speaker 1: on this story for a little while because partly it's
Speaker 1: a little kind of aluted and long to present during
Speaker 1: the radio show in which we're during which we're under
Speaker 1: the cruel, cruel oppressions of the clock. But now we
Speaker 1: have a little time, and I guess this is probably
Speaker 1: under Jack, filed under one of your favorite themes, which
Speaker 1: is people aren't nearly grateful enough to be Americans. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so live in America, who've grown up those of us
Speaker 1: who've grown up here or ended up here. If that's
Speaker 1: the case.
Speaker 2: This morning, I won't say what, but I heard a
Speaker 2: story about a dar four and they're in Africa this morning.
Speaker 2: It's all like, jeez, you're so lucky you live here.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I don't know. It's probably costing me part of
Speaker 1: my soul, but I do read those accounts of the
Speaker 1: various wars in Africa, and I mentioned them now and
Speaker 1: again on the air, but the horrors of them are
Speaker 1: I don't want to bring you down to describe them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it is human beings who have lost their humanity completely. Yeah,
Speaker 1: committing atrocities on grand scales. Anyway, on a cheerier note, whoops,
Speaker 1: this isn't very cheery, but it's amazing. So there is
Speaker 1: a huge problem in Africa, specifically South Africa, with illegal mining.
Speaker 1: You have companies or groups of people either do their
Speaker 1: digging themselves or find an old mine and decide we
Speaker 1: think there's still some life in this bastard and we're
Speaker 1: to mine it. But they have no right to be there,
Speaker 1: they have no permits, they're not operating under any laws,
Speaker 1: they're trespassing and the rest of it. Well, So there
Speaker 1: was one of those in a place you've never heard
Speaker 1: of in South Africa where the authorities found them and
Speaker 1: busted them while there were a ton of guys down
Speaker 1: under the surface. And I think initially the guys refused
Speaker 1: to come up because they didn't want to get arrested,
Speaker 1: and so the government said, yeah, we're going to starve
Speaker 1: them out right, We're going to cut off any food
Speaker 1: and water getting down there, and so the miners have
Speaker 1: been holed up since the police cut off the employe
Speaker 1: use of food and water in August. The story's written
Speaker 1: in August, Yeah, this was story was written in mid January.
Speaker 1: A legal application filed by a human rights group to
Speaker 1: speed up the rescue included an affidavit for I'm a miner,
Speaker 1: who also said that some had resorted to consuming human
Speaker 1: flesh to stay alive. So the government finally initiated the
Speaker 1: rescue operation after a human rights group launched a series
Speaker 1: of legal challenges to the blockade. The government was physically
Speaker 1: blockading anybody from rescuing these miners. They're like, no, we're
Speaker 1: starving them out. You can't help them, you can't get them,
Speaker 1: so before you pay it off, well one more factor
Speaker 1: real quick. But officials refused to allow even after they said, okay,
Speaker 1: they can be rescued, but nobody official is going to
Speaker 1: go down in there because it's too dangerous.
Speaker 2: Hmm, not sure. I have a problem with this. We're
Speaker 2: not making you stay down there, come on out. No,
Speaker 2: we're not coming out. Okay, well we'll wait.
Speaker 1: Well, but then for some reason they couldn't get out
Speaker 1: anymore because they didn't have the Some of the logistics
Speaker 1: of this are a little confusing to me, but like
Speaker 1: they didn't have the elevators down there or whatever, so
Speaker 1: they couldn't come out if they wanted.
Speaker 2: But you can't eat somebody unless they're dead. Did they
Speaker 2: start killing some of their compatriots and then eating them?
Speaker 2: And how do you decide who goes? Or did they
Speaker 2: starve and then you eat them?
Speaker 1: Yeah? I mean we I can.
Speaker 2: See donner party of one, Donner party of.
Speaker 1: One, jeez. Yeah. Yeah. So what happened was and the
Speaker 1: way the narratives plays out in this whole long article,
Speaker 1: I apologize for my fumbling with it. It skips back
Speaker 1: and forth like journalism sometimes does. It's not laid out chronologically.
Speaker 1: But so, with hundreds of miners trapped below the ground
Speaker 1: with out food or water, two men from the local
Speaker 1: town volunteered to venture where no police, government officials, or
Speaker 1: professional rescuers were willing to go. So these guys made
Speaker 1: their first descent wearing white hard hats, helmets, t shirts,
Speaker 1: stepped out of a red cage dangling on a cable
Speaker 1: from a crane on the surface forty two hundred feet
Speaker 1: above them. Their lights illuminated a sea of emaciated faces.
Speaker 1: Men crowded into a chamber were crying and pleading to
Speaker 1: be saved from the pitch black of the abandoned gold mine.
Speaker 1: Their lights had burned out weeks or months earlier, and
Speaker 1: they ended up making more than thirty trips underground over
Speaker 1: the next three days, and says the one guy, can't
Speaker 1: explain the smell down there. They told us they were
Speaker 1: eating human flesh and cockroaches. They had lost hope. And
Speaker 1: one of the touchy parts of this was everybody was
Speaker 1: so crazy and panic stricken, and they could only bring
Speaker 1: up thirteen men at a time in a cage designed
Speaker 1: to hold six people stuffed together. Okay, so it was
Speaker 1: completely crammed with these poor, barely hanging on human beings
Speaker 1: trying to assure the others we are coming back.
Speaker 3: Oh, could you imagine seeing that thing going up and.
Speaker 2: Not knowing Yeah, the lifeboats on the Titanic. Yeah, wait
Speaker 2: a second.
Speaker 1: Right, Well, that was one of the reasons that these
Speaker 1: two guys, who are heroes, unquestionably and some of the
Speaker 1: authorities agreed to send them down because they were locals
Speaker 1: and could talk to these guys and relate to these guys.
Speaker 1: They weren't quote unquote the authorities. So oh, by the way,
Speaker 1: it's worth mentioning that even in normal times, gunfights have
Speaker 1: been reported among competing minors thousands of feet underground. These
Speaker 1: are just crazy ass lawless digs that people. They have
Speaker 1: no better options than to do this, so they do
Speaker 1: go down to survive, okay, right. In fact, this one guy,
Speaker 1: one of the rescuers, He last emerged from a stint
Speaker 1: underground in October at a different abandoned gold mine. He'd
Speaker 1: lived in tunnels below the surface for three months at
Speaker 1: a time where underground commerce was functioning. A regularly purchase food, drinks,
Speaker 1: and headlamps from vendors who bring their wares into the mines.
Speaker 1: But you never go out for months at a time
Speaker 1: lest you get arrested.
Speaker 3: God what no outside, no sunlight? What that must do
Speaker 3: to your mind?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, And so then and you're reduced to eating
Speaker 1: cockroaches and dead people. You got to f feel around
Speaker 1: and find them and communicate with each other.
Speaker 2: And then Jim starts looking delicious.
Speaker 3: Oh jeez, there's no way to go back to normal
Speaker 3: after that at all.
Speaker 1: No, No, no, not even close. So it was difficult
Speaker 1: to decide whom to bring up first. Charles said, that's
Speaker 1: one of the key guys here. Each trip up and
Speaker 1: down took forty five minutes. They tried to prioritize the
Speaker 1: weakest second deceased for fear the decomposition would worsen. They
Speaker 1: brought bread, potato chips and water with them to ease
Speaker 1: the last agonizing hours underground for the people who had
Speaker 1: to wait. For about five months. These workers were trapped
Speaker 1: underground as police tried to smoke them out. In the
Speaker 1: words of the minister in the government, a long time.
Speaker 2: To be in the pitch dark eating gym.
Speaker 1: The operation was part of the police's closed the whole
Speaker 1: plan to combat illegal mining, which has reached crisis levels
Speaker 1: in South Africa, a staggering forty two percent unemployment rate
Speaker 1: in South Africa under the brave leadership of the parties
Speaker 1: that took over after all the white people were kicked
Speaker 1: out of government. Not that it's a race thing, it's
Speaker 1: a corruption thing. But it's led to high levels of
Speaker 1: chronic poverty. So people do this sort of thing. Between
Speaker 1: August and January, more than fifteen hundred miners emerged voluntarily
Speaker 1: from this shaft. Others died attempting to climb out of
Speaker 1: the mine, while some became too weak to try after
Speaker 1: hunkering down for months to avoid arrest, and the people
Speaker 1: pulled out of the mine were charged with trespassing and
Speaker 1: other crimes.
Speaker 2: Well thanks, yeah. Do you think you could get hungry
Speaker 2: enough to eat Michael?
Speaker 1: For instance? If I'm starving to death, do we have
Speaker 1: to make it a specific person? Well, yes, is the answer. Yes, absolutely, Really,
Speaker 1: I'm surprised by that. I'm a carnivore and I'm a realist.
Speaker 1: I assume it's ay. If I don't eat him, I
Speaker 1: will be dead. I would prefer to live, So that's
Speaker 1: what I do. Can you cook him first with what
Speaker 1: you're stick down a miron shaft? I don't know, make
Speaker 1: a fire? You're unclear on the concept, dear, so the
Speaker 1: government official. And this is another aspect of how foreign
Speaker 1: this is to Americans. Literally, this government official they quote
Speaker 1: about why they starved him to death like that. He
Speaker 1: compared the calls for humanitarian assistance for the miners to
Speaker 1: asking the police to send food and water to a
Speaker 1: robber hold up inside a bank. Sending sustenance to the
Speaker 1: miners would be aiding in a betting crime and criminality.
Speaker 1: If they let them die and starve and eat each.
Speaker 2: Other, I agree if they can get out, but if
Speaker 2: they actually if they if they can't get out, well
Speaker 2: then it's a different thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah. See, that's the part of the narrative that confuses
Speaker 1: me because at the point where they're starving to death
Speaker 1: and eating Jim, you'd think they'd think, you know, it's
Speaker 1: like just a misdemeanor charge. I'm gonna go up and
Speaker 1: get busted right.
Speaker 2: And go to subway right.
Speaker 1: So yeah, that that part is not clear to me.
Speaker 1: But between the way the government approached it and that,
Speaker 1: the employment rate and so misery eye.
Speaker 2: So you get hungry enough, So where do you start?
Speaker 1: Do you suppose five?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Ribs? You know I love ribs, whether it's babyback, you know, Michael.
Speaker 3: Put some on those, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but you know the thigh has got a nice
Speaker 1: it's in the butt as well, I mean, the the
Speaker 1: gluty's maximus. You're looking for muscle tissue somewhat marbled with fat.
Speaker 1: It's like taking a good steak, Jack. I don't look,
Speaker 1: we're starving to death in this scenario, and you all are.
Speaker 2: Like, oh oh, Ikey, you gotta get practical, I promise you.
Speaker 2: I'm plenty of marbled.
Speaker 1: Yes, it's probably gonna be rare.
Speaker 2: If I'm cooking it. This is one time where I
Speaker 2: want it well done. I want it cooked all the
Speaker 2: way through. No pink police, And Mike is working on
Speaker 2: his glutes as he says, so is it legitimately?
Speaker 1: Is it?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 2: You know, if you're at the grocery store and you're
Speaker 2: not hungry, you just buy the stuff you need. But
Speaker 2: if you're hungry at the grocery store. I tell my
Speaker 2: kids this all the time. If you're hungry at the
Speaker 2: grocery store, everything looks delicious. So if you're even hungrier,
Speaker 2: do you get to the point where it's just not
Speaker 2: even really a battle to eat a human? You're just
Speaker 2: so hungry It smells, looks, taste, tastes great.
Speaker 1: You think, I'm not sure I'd go that far, But
Speaker 1: I'm with you eighty percent of the way. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: wouldn't think, you know, this is kind of gross. He'd
Speaker 1: be like a snarling beast, like a hungry wolf.
Speaker 2: You're right, yeah, shop being at the grocery store hungry
Speaker 2: is just the disaster.
Speaker 1: Michael.
Speaker 3: If we're eating your glutes. I need some cho lula
Speaker 3: and some sauce, and they got to be cooked.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a little sweet baby raised or something like that.
Speaker 1: What isla, I don't know what that is. You don't
Speaker 1: know chi lula? What not? That one raised? Right?
Speaker 2: Yeah, my Martian illegal goal. I'll stand up for you.
Speaker 2: Mil I've never heard that word in my life. What what?
Speaker 2: What the hell is that?
Speaker 3: There is something seriously wrong with you too? If you
Speaker 3: don't know what the chilu is.
Speaker 2: No idea, that's probably racist. I guess it's something they
Speaker 2: put on your ass to make it taste better. Michael, Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's it's ass sauce.
Speaker 1: No, it's a delicious, mildly hot hot sauce that comes
Speaker 1: in a couple of different varieties. And I've never even
Speaker 1: heard the word, and Americans are familiar with it. If
Speaker 1: this was the Battle of the Bulge, I'd shoot both
Speaker 1: of you as German spies because you don't know this
Speaker 1: great country.
Speaker 2: We don't have it at eye hoop.
Speaker 3: I can tell you that, you know, I probably wouldn't
Speaker 3: be as tasty these days. I have my blood sugar
Speaker 3: down and so I'm probably not real sweet.
Speaker 1: I've gotta think my taste is pretty dull.
Speaker 2: Point, if I have to eat pre dieting, yeah, well,
Speaker 2: to paraphrase Luis c K, I am literally starving.
Speaker 1: I don't care. Well, I guess that's it.