Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to short stuff. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck,
Speaker 1: and there's Josh over there, and this is short stuff.
Speaker 1: Get up, Chuck. All right, We're gonna go to the
Speaker 1: late nineteen seventies. The Vietnam War is well over, well
Speaker 1: for America at least, well that's true, um, But Vietnamese
Speaker 1: and Leotian people started noticing over there that periodically there
Speaker 1: would be a sticky yellow rain um when it was
Speaker 1: really sunny out coming down, and that this substance killed
Speaker 1: plants and made people sick, especially among the among the Moongo,
Speaker 1: which is to say h m O n G, which
Speaker 1: were people in Southeast Asia who fought with France against
Speaker 1: the Communists since the nineteen fifties. Yeah, they were mountain
Speaker 1: people in north north Vietnam and in Laos. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: think they probably uh there, Oh, never mind, I was
Speaker 1: about to discuss a deleted scene and apocalypse now, but
Speaker 1: we don't have time for that. Are they the ones
Speaker 1: that they dine with they have dinner with it? I
Speaker 1: think so. I think there were French in the in Mong,
Speaker 1: but it would make sense because the Mong cast their
Speaker 1: lot with the with the French, and then later on
Speaker 1: the Americans when the CIA showed up, because remember we've
Speaker 1: talked about this in multiple episodes. One of the things
Speaker 1: that the CIA did is they would drop behind enemy
Speaker 1: lines and say, oh, you hate the people were fighting too, well,
Speaker 1: let's assemble a guerilla army, and the Mong fought with them. Well,
Speaker 1: that led to big time trouble for the Mong after
Speaker 1: the Americans withdrew and I believe nineteen seventy five, because
Speaker 1: that left the Mong holding the bag. Everyone knew that
Speaker 1: the Mong had fought against the Communists, and the Communists
Speaker 1: had just become successful in the Vietnam War, and so
Speaker 1: the Communists turned their um ire against the Mong people
Speaker 1: who no longer had any any American backing. So as
Speaker 1: they were kind of driven from their homes and um
Speaker 1: and and two refugee camps across the border into Thailand.
Speaker 1: Um they were harassed by the Communist government and from that,
Speaker 1: from that that experience, this idea that they that something
Speaker 1: was being sprayed on them kind of took root, this
Speaker 1: yellow rain that was thought to be some sort of
Speaker 1: um biological weapon that was being deployed by the Vietnamese government.
Speaker 1: And Um, the Americans took it quite seriously. And got
Speaker 1: their hands on some samples, and in I think nine one,
Speaker 1: Alexander Hague, who was Secretary of State at the time, said, yep,
Speaker 1: it's some sort of biological weapon. We think it's tricot sin,
Speaker 1: which is a micro toxin, and we think that the
Speaker 1: Soviets are supplying it in flagrant violation of anti biological
Speaker 1: weapons conventions that have been around. Since you didn't do
Speaker 1: your Alexander Haigue. That was my Alexander. It didn't come through.
Speaker 1: The whole thing was well, goodness, sorry, Al, can you
Speaker 1: do one? Let's hear your well, I would I would
Speaker 1: just have said something about the soil at Union like that.
Speaker 1: That's uh, that's Henry Kissinger. Oh you're right, yeah, Alexander,
Speaker 1: he didn't talk anything like that. I was totally thinking Kissinger.
Speaker 1: And it's funny. As soon as you said that, I
Speaker 1: got a mental picture that went from Kissinger to Hague
Speaker 1: because I totally remember Al Hague, now, yeah, for sure,
Speaker 1: all right, that was you know, he liked to impersonate
Speaker 1: Kissinger everybody, yeah, behind his back, and it wasn't very flattering,
Speaker 1: all right, So uh, and we're going to leave that
Speaker 1: in there, even though its short stuff. I don't care.
Speaker 1: That was a classic s Y s K moment, my friend. So, uh,
Speaker 1: first of all, we should point out that this idea
Speaker 1: that it would be something like that after we had
Speaker 1: dropped agent orange all over the place for ten years,
Speaker 1: you can't blame them for thinking something like that is
Speaker 1: going on. However, Uh, something kind of smelled hinky in
Speaker 1: the nose of one. Matt Messelsson was a biologist at
Speaker 1: Harvard University, and he said, this doesn't really make sense
Speaker 1: to me. So a couple of years later in he
Speaker 1: got some samples and he said, you know what's in here.
Speaker 1: It's really weird. He said, there's a lot of hollowed
Speaker 1: out pollen that's indigenous to this area. And this would
Speaker 1: mean that the Soviet Union is taking pollen, hollowing it out,
Speaker 1: filling it with poison, and bringing it back and dropping
Speaker 1: it down on sunny days like it's rain. It's a
Speaker 1: very bad idea, it's very outlandish. It's not a very
Speaker 1: effective dispersal method. And the concentration of of myco toxins
Speaker 1: in there, anyway, was not really any different than samples
Speaker 1: of UH leaves and plants anywhere else in Southeast Asia. Right,
Speaker 1: like his His position was like, yes, these people are
Speaker 1: being harassed, but I don't think this yellow rain is
Speaker 1: actually a biological weapon being supplied by the USS are
Speaker 1: that there's something else going on. It's it's like you said,
Speaker 1: it's just too outland ish. What that what the process
Speaker 1: would require for this to to be what it was.
Speaker 1: So he had he was a biologist, like you said,
Speaker 1: and he knew enough to know that bees, specifically UM
Speaker 1: giant Asian honey bees that lived in the area UM
Speaker 1: actually will eat pollen, but they don't eat the outer
Speaker 1: shell of the pollen. They eat the protein inside the pollen.
Speaker 1: So when they poop, they poop out regular pollen or
Speaker 1: they poop out hollowed out pollen. Okay, So he said,
Speaker 1: I think I think this might just be a case
Speaker 1: of honey bee poop. I think that's what everybody's freaked
Speaker 1: out about, is it's just honey bee poop. But people
Speaker 1: were saying, Okay, yeah, that's true biologically, but what you're
Speaker 1: talking about for that for something that looks like yellow
Speaker 1: rain to be produced would would require a mind boggling
Speaker 1: number of bees to all poop at once in the
Speaker 1: same area. So explain that, Mr Messelson, mr. Mr Harvard
Speaker 1: trained biologist. You can't, can you? And he said I
Speaker 1: will right after this message break. Al Right, So Messeilson
Speaker 1: takes a message break. Everyone's like, what's that, right, and
Speaker 1: he said, I just said he's a bathroom. Oh well,
Speaker 1: that's normal enough, but we don't call it message breaks.
Speaker 1: So there was well he used scare quotes. So uh
Speaker 1: so he said there's some other inconsistencies here too, because
Speaker 1: you interviewed a lot of people and um, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of people that said that there were no planes
Speaker 1: around when this stuff was raining down, which is a problem. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because I mean that's how you disperse biological weapons typically
Speaker 1: is from a plane. So where's this you know, where's
Speaker 1: the plane? How is this stuff happening if there's no plane?
Speaker 1: And he also said that you know all these health
Speaker 1: problems that are going on, he said, it's really probably
Speaker 1: just um people with dysentery and nutritional deficiencies. And you know,
Speaker 1: it seems like you're asking very leading questions to me.
Speaker 1: This whole thing really stinks at this point to Messilson, well,
Speaker 1: we'll also check there's one other thing there. So I
Speaker 1: went back and I was reading some like an article
Speaker 1: in science from the time, and they were saying like, like,
Speaker 1: there is indeed some sort of micro toxic poison that
Speaker 1: is hurting people. And so that was a big reason
Speaker 1: why this is still yet resolved because there was micro
Speaker 1: toxic poisoning. Messilson's position was, well, these people are living
Speaker 1: in refugee camps. It's not like they're eating top of
Speaker 1: the line food. I'm sure some of them are eating
Speaker 1: moldy food and are suffering ill effects from it. So
Speaker 1: that would explain this appearance of micro toxic poisoning. And
Speaker 1: in in that guy's defense, that tricot the scene is
Speaker 1: supposedly was discovered in the USSR from people eating moldy food.
Speaker 1: That's how it was first found. Amazing. Yeah, So a
Speaker 1: few years later nine I'm about to graduate high school
Speaker 1: and Messilson teams up with some Canadian biologists to figure
Speaker 1: this whole thing out, because the whole idea of like,
Speaker 1: why you know, you know how many bees it would
Speaker 1: take to poop down yellow rain on everyone, And they said, well,
Speaker 1: we're going to find out just how many bees it
Speaker 1: would take. Uh. They realized that it was falling on hot,
Speaker 1: sunny days, which is the first big clue, and they
Speaker 1: measured the body mass of these bees before they left
Speaker 1: their highs, then after they came back to the hives,
Speaker 1: and they found out that while they were gone they
Speaker 1: lost of their body weight on the return flight. That
Speaker 1: is a big old poop. That's a big old poop.
Speaker 1: So they would leave together and these big giant swarms,
Speaker 1: thousands of them, they would poop. They would come back
Speaker 1: to care for their little larvae. And they said, this
Speaker 1: is also happening most frequently on really hot sunny day,
Speaker 1: so we think we've kind of figured this thing out right.
Speaker 1: What they figured out was that the so um Asian
Speaker 1: honey bees the larva as they're developing, if they overheat,
Speaker 1: they will deform basically, um they they will um develop incorrectly,
Speaker 1: I guess. And so to keep the temperature in the
Speaker 1: hive lower, especially on hot sunny days, the hive, the
Speaker 1: bees in the hive will fly out and and excrete
Speaker 1: waste all at once, basically or in one trip. And
Speaker 1: then when they come back, since they've lost their body weight,
Speaker 1: the temperature inside the hive is that much lower because
Speaker 1: their weight is not producing that much more waste heat.
Speaker 1: So they actually figured out that that's what bees will do,
Speaker 1: at least Asian honey bees, to keep the to regulate
Speaker 1: the temperature in the hive so that the larva can
Speaker 1: develop normally. Um, and they said, we think we just
Speaker 1: solve the mystery of yellow rain. That's right. Uh more.
Speaker 1: Research in later years pretty much confirmed this and everyone
Speaker 1: is basically on board, except for the fact that Kissinger
Speaker 1: and Alexander Haig never came back and retract of their statements.
Speaker 1: So officially we um, you know, I don't know if
Speaker 1: that stuff matters or not, but officially we have never
Speaker 1: retracted that statement as as a nation that it was
Speaker 1: not the Soviet Union. Um. I just got finished watching Chernobyl,
Speaker 1: so I gotta see it. I'm like at a fever
Speaker 1: point of like the truth and toxins because the Soviet
Speaker 1: Union still says or I'm sorry, Russia still says thirty
Speaker 1: one people died. How many people did die? Oh, they
Speaker 1: don't know, anywhere between four thousand and ninety thousand, depending
Speaker 1: on how you count. You know, cancer twenty years later
Speaker 1: and stuff like that. Should we do? I was talking
Speaker 1: to a friend, Blair Um, who is a friend of
Speaker 1: both of ours, a photographer, and he was like, you
Speaker 1: gotta do one on Chernoba, And I'm like, everybody knows
Speaker 1: about it, now, should we do one? Maybe? Okay, because
Speaker 1: I'd love to. It's a fascinating topic, But if everybody
Speaker 1: already knows about it, it's like, what's the point. It's
Speaker 1: a it was a heck of a show. I'll say that,
Speaker 1: all right, Well I'll at least watch that, all right.
Speaker 1: So to finish here, though the Mong, for their part,
Speaker 1: things haven't gotten a lot better. They continue to suffer
Speaker 1: to this day. Um. Very small amount of them made
Speaker 1: it over to the United States. Uh. Some people returned
Speaker 1: to Laos, some people returned to Vietnam. Uh. Like we
Speaker 1: said at the beginning, a lot of them were going
Speaker 1: to Thailand as refugees. But in two thousand nine the
Speaker 1: Thai government shut that down and sent away thousands and
Speaker 1: thousands of the Mong. And Uh, it's really just sort
Speaker 1: of a sad situation. But as this article points out,
Speaker 1: the one silver lining is that, like this whole thing,
Speaker 1: anytime there's a new theory about what happened, or anytime
Speaker 1: it makes the news, the Mong also make the news, right,
Speaker 1: which I think is really worth pointing out. For sure,
Speaker 1: this this uh. One of the articles we used for
Speaker 1: this was um called the Mystery of Yellow Rain. It
Speaker 1: was written by Jacob Roberts for Distillations, which is a
Speaker 1: blog of the Science History Institute. Very good stuff. All right,
Speaker 1: Well that's it for short stuff see later. M H.
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of I Heeart
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