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Selects: How Famines Work · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Good morning everybody. It's Saturday here in the world. I'm Chuck.
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: I'm your co host of Stuff you Should Know, and
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: it is my charge, my duty to pick out this
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: week's Saturday Select selection. I'm going with hal Famines work
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: from February thirteenth, twenty seventeen. Pretty interesting stuff and also
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: a little bit sad. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know,
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: a production of iHeartRadio.
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: Charles W Chuck Bryant and Jerry the jerister that should
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: we say? What just happened? It's weird, of course, said focus?
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, like, oh what is this? Nine hundred and probably
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: twenty something thirty something episodes?
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: Let's get up there.
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: And for the first time ever, right before we went go,
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: Jerry said, focus, what does that mean?
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: Usually she goes, huh what I don't get it?
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: Is this me so bothering?
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: You guys? Right? Exactly?
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: Smell me so bothering?
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: That's so Jerry?
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: Focus?
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  Speaker 2: All right?
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  Speaker 1: I feel pressure now, Yeah I do.
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: I'm a little off now Jerry, thanks?
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: So yeah, that worked, all right.
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: Let's concentrate, all right, So we're talking Chuck about you
• 1:26
  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
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: super sad, horrific geopolitical catastrophe sweets.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, this probably will not be chock full of humor. No,
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: I try to think of a way to insert some jokes.
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: There's not unless we go on a tangent.
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: Do you remember though eighties stand up comedians like they
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: would make just the worst jokes that just would not fly,
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: Like they get chased off stage by what are you
• 1:56
  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
• 2:03
  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,
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: it was not nuanced or smarts or anything.
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I think Sam Kennison made like starving Ethiopian kid jokes, right,
• 2:18
  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
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: be is tons of information and hopefully everybody who will
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: understand famines after this can come together and prevent them
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: for the rest of eternity unless climate change gets it,
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: says we'll see at the end. Yes, I just spoiled
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  Speaker 2: it though, didn't I.
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's I'm glad you said that that was relevant.
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: So everybody has a pretty good idea of what famine is.
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: It's when you run out of food and a bunch
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: of people start dying. That's actually pretty close to the
• 3:01
  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
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: written several books on famines and studied famines, and he's
• 3:14
  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
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: lot like malnutrition, Yeah, but it's a lot worse. There's
• 3:28
  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
• 3:34
  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
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: it's not just hunger starvation related but all the disease
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: it comes along with that that can kill people very
• 3:54
  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
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: of a vicious cycle. Like as people start to get
• 4:03
  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
• 5:03
  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
• 5:47
  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
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: just what you would consider malnutrition. And this is all
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: tied into what we call food security, right. And we
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: talked about food security before, I think maybe in desertification
• 6:51
  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
• 7:03
  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
• 7:20
  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
• 10:20
  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
• 10:49
  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
• 11:01
  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
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: remember that.
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  Speaker 1: Because of rice? Right?
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: It was because of rice, but the global food price
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: had Like when they look at food prices, they look
• 11:26
  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,
• 11:40
  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
• 11:47
  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
• 11:54
  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
• 12:02
  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
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: the energy supply as well, and it had a huge
• 12:18
  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
• 12:37
  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,
• 12:43
  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
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: that twenty one thousand children die of hunger every day day. Yep,
• 13:10
  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
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: you know the parents are in bad shape too. Well,
• 13:32
  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
• 13:36
  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,
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: because then you could be living in unsanitary conditions and
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: everybody has lower immune systems and you're basically in a herd. Now,
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: like moving to a different place to get food, and
• 14:00
  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
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: not often resettled in, you know, the most hospitable areas either,
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: so moving doesn't necessarily help the cause in a lot
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: of cases. All right, let's take a break and we're
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: going to come back and talk a little bit about
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: some of the more noteworthy famines throughout history. All right,
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: So I said we're going to talk about historical famines.
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: I lied, that's coming later. Is that all right?
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's fine.
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: All right, So we're going to talk You sent this
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: great article. What was the name of.
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: It, The History of Humanity is a History of hunger.
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: It was written by a guy named Mark Joseph Stern
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: on Slate.
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: This is a good one.
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, he's basically ringing the belly's saying, hey, guys,
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: there seems to be this movement toward looking at famines
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: as the result of dictatorships, which we'll get into super interesting,
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: but let's not forget something else. And it's a little
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: something called global climate change. Yeah, because I think from
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: Stearn's perspective, and he doesn't put this explicitly but he
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: basically says, yes, dictatorships can have this effect and have
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: had this effect. It's proven. But really, honestly, that's fairly
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: localized from a globalized perspective. Yeah, right, even if it
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: just happens in China, that's still technically local as far
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: as the globe is concerned. And that means that there's
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: other people around the globe that can help the people
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: in China or Ethiopia or Ireland or wherever a famine happens. Again. Yeah,
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: so we've got stuff in place, but if the entire
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: global food supply starts to become threatened by climate change,
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: then we're all toast, I think is ultimately the message
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: of what he's saying.
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and he was kind of saying like he kind
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: of set it up really well throughout history and then said,
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: but nowadays, you know, things have never been better. There's
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: more food than ever, supply chain is more robust, so
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: like we shouldn't have anything to worry about right on
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: a global scale. And that's when he said, you know,
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: you might want to look at some of these studies.
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: And one of them, there was a report from the
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and they said that
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: rising temperatures around the globe are cutting into global food supply.
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: I think to the point now where if it continues
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: at current levels, there could be a two percent cut
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: in crop harvests each decade moving forward. Yeah, and it
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: might not sound like a lot two percent a decade though,
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: but when you couple that with a rising population, that's
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: a problem. Especially like in the short term, you might think, oh, well,
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: you can grow more food more places if if it's warmer,
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: if things are melting. True in a lot of cases, Yeah,
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: and certainly more CO two will increase yields in the
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: short term, but in the long term, warming trends will
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: make crops welt, especially near the tropics. I saw one
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: stat that said a three percent I'm sorry, three degree
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: celsius increase in temperature at the tropics could cut corn
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: crops by twenty percent. Wow, So it's you know, it's
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: a real threat.
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, even without a massive temperature change like that
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: or an increase in CO two, one of the trademarks
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: of climate change is severe weather, which we're seeing more
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: and more, it seems, Yeah, too much rain, severe weather
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: is not enough rain good for crops. Yeah, yeah, or
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: either one over like a couple of year period, you're
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: not going to be able to grow crops, or you're
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: growing season is going to be shortened, or the whole
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: crop will just be wiped out right there at the end.
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: Who knows well.
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: And then the other thing you need to think about,
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: which he points out, is well, we can invent our
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: way out of this, like technology will take care of
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: it always. And the study from NASA there's a more
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: dire wind from NASA than even the UN one that
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: basically says we're screwed. And the NASA one says technological
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: change tends to raise both per capita resource consumption and
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: the scale of resource extraction, basically meaning it just is
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: sort of a net net, like we can't invent our
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: way out of.
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: It, right, Like it's net up till the point where
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: we run out of resources. Yes, then we're toast. Yes,
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: so there is a big threat from climate change. But
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: what Stern's saying is actually kind of retro to tell
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: you the truth, because up until the last couple decades,
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: everybody he looked at famine as strictly a natural disaster,
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: and it started to become increasingly apparent of what kind
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: of a man made disaster famine can be, especially when
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: people started to look at China's Great Famine back as
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: part of Mao's cultural revolution. So chuck China. I didn't
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: really realize this. I don't think I didn't know a
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: lot about it either. There's a something called when Mao
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: took over. When the Communists took over China in nineteen
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: forty nine, one of the things that Mao set his
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: sights on, Sherman Mauzi Dong, was that he wanted to
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: show the West just how great communism was, the same
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: dream of Stalin, But he also wanted to be the
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: top guy in the communist world too, so he was
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: very ambitious. And one of the ways to do that
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: was one of the same path that Stalin had followed,
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: which was, well, we've got a lot of agriculture here.
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: Let's use our agriculture to fund and finance industrialization. So
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: we're gonna shock the system. We're gonna take these old
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: agrarian backwards ways, we're gonna put them together in this
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: great communist way, and we're gonna squeeze as much productivity
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: out of them as we can. We're gonna funnel that
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: money into the workers in the cities. We're gonna make
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: China the glorious leader of the world, and we're going
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: to catch up to productivity to the productivity of the
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: UK or the US within ten years, five years, which
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: is insane.
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's called the Great Leap Forward, and it was
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: a five year plan, which you're right it was. I
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: mean to call it ambitious. What it was was a
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: disaster in the making because what happened was, especially when
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: you live under someone like Malse Tongue, you're going to
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: have people that are afraid to tell the truth about
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: what's going on. So what happened from the very beginning
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: is officials, either driven fear or just because they were
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: so caught up in the movement, started exaggerating reports of
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: crop success, like they were literally reporting like three to
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: five times what they were really bringing in with their crops.
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: And then the authorities came along and basically took those
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: crops to the urban centers, killed off anyone who had
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: any opposition to this.
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: Well, I think they were also killed aff locally too,
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: Like if you were going to say, no, this guy's
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: lying about crop yields, Oh yeah, by the local people
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: would take care of you.
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you just disappear. And so what happened in nineteen
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: fifty eight, This is an actual quote. Malca Tongue said,
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: to distribute resources evenly will only ruin the great leap forward.
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: When there's not enough to eat, people starved to death,
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: it is better to let half the people die so
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: that the others can eat their fill. So this is there,
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: you have it, right.
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: It was very clearly a man made famine, like they
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: were aware of it, and you wonder, like, why were
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: they coming to grab the grain? Well, grain had turned
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: from something that people produced locally for basically local consumption,
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: into a national commodity that was used to feed these
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: workers and then to sell on the global market to
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: finance the glorious revolution. Right, So when grain was turned
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: into a commodity and people were given quotas to meet,
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: if you wanted to get ahead, you could just say, oh,
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: we had this great, great yield this year, so we've
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: got all this grain. And there were cases where the
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: Chinese government would come and requisition more grain than they
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: had then they'd even grown that yea, based on these
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: false reports. Right, So people started to starve. Clearly, Mao
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: had no problem with it because it was the people
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: out in the It was the farmers, not the workers
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: who were starving. And in three years. The lowest number
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: anyone's willing to say of the total number of people
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: who died in three years from this famine is fifteen
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: million people.
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the lowest.
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: That's what the Chinese government itself officially says.
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I've seen numbers. I've seen a total population loss
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: and that means thirty five million deaths and forty million
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: people that weren't born because of all this. Oh yeah,
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: so a total population loss of seventy five million. And
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: it's still apparently, like I looked into it today, it
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: is very taboo to even talk about it today in China. Right,
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: And they don't call it a famine. They call it
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: three years of natural disaster or three years of difficulties.
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: Right, that's what they call it, capitalized. Yeah, yeah, that's
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: the title name.
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, it's amazing.
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and apparently the yeah, they don't talk about it.
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: It's not obviously not taught in schools. It's certainly not
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: taught as the result of a calamitous government policy, because
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: that same government, the Communist Party, is still in charge there.
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: But yeah, that was a huge enormous famine, and I
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: guess Skulship on that started to open people's eyes about
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: how human intervention could make a famine much much worse.
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: Same thing with Ethiopia as well. Ethiopia is almost famous
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: in a weird way for famines.
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they especially, like you said, if you grew up
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: in the eighties, it was sort of the face of
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: famine and drought was Ethiopia. And if you go back,
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: you know, back in time Prime Minister Melis Zenawi. This
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: was what more than twenty years ago at this point
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: that when I mentioned earlier what his vision for the country,
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: he said, you know, I hope in ten years that
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: Ethiopians will eat three times a day, and after twenty years,
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: not only are going to have enough food, but they're
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: gonna have the luxury of choosing what they eat. He
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: was in office for twenty one years before he died
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: in power and things these days aren't a whole lot better.
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: No, So, like I remember learning about Ethiopia and their famines,
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: and I just was thinking, like, wow, they must have
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: just the worst weather. They've got the worst luck with weather. Yeah,
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: it turns out no, they had the worst luck with governments. Yeah,
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: so they had a famine in nineteen seventy three that
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: the government basically just covered up.
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the Wallow Famine.
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and in that three hundred thousand people died. And
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: even though there were there was actually plenty of food.
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: The reason the famine had come along was because food
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: prices had increased just a little bit, but the people
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: in the Wallow region were so poor they couldn't afford
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: the food that was even available to them.
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and this is nineteen seventy three, the same year
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: that Emperor highly Selassie spent thirty five million dollars on
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: his eightieth birthday celebration, Right, so he's starting it's starting
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: to kind of become clear what's going on.
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: And then the very famous famine, famous here in the West,
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: the nineteen eighty three to eighty five famine. Everyone who
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: was funding that. That was when band Aid came out.
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: They had that do they know It's Christmas song? They
• 26:11
  Speaker 2: had the Live Aid concerts. Phil Collins flew in the
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: concord from London to Philadelphia to play two shows at
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: the same night.
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: Do you remember Live Aid? How old were you this
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: eight four? Yeah?
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: I was eight.
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: Do you remember it happening? Like, did you watch it?
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: I remember the Phil Collins thing.
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: Of course you do, because he loved Phil Collins. No,
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: I totally remember. I was babysitting at his summer gig,
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: a regular summer gig where would babysit these kids like
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: for half days, like you know, Monday through Friday. And
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: I was babysitting these kids, and we watched Live Aid
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: and I remember seeing, of course Phil Collins, and I
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: remember seeing the amazing performance by Queen like, oh, it's
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: still like one of their like hallmark performances. Was there
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: Live Aid? But yeah, it was like it was all
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: over the place USA for Africa. It was one of
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: the big causes because of this famine, right.
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: And it was great, like there was all these great
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: pictures of or not great picture, but there were pictures
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: spread far and wide that were waking up the West like, guys,
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: there's a huge problem. You got to give. And band
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: Aid and Live Aid raised one hundred and fifty million
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: dollars in nineteen eighty four for famine relief, and in
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: Ethiopia they had a significant impact. Yeah, but what no
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: one realized because the reporters were too lazy to report
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: and the government was doing a good job covering up.
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: This famine was not the direct result of a drought
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: or a crop failure. The government was actually fighting a
• 27:46
  Speaker 2: civil war secretly against the what the group that now
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: makes up Eritrea, Yeah, the eritrean ethnic group. Uh. And
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: the government was like naypalming the crop lands there, blowing
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: up cargo transports, blowing up farmers' markets, to affect the
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: food supply, and to create a famine. It was a
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: man made famine.
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And not only that, you know, I talked about
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: frivolous spending by the government. They spent that year in
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: I think nineteen eighty three, they spent between one hundred
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: million and two hundred million dollars to celebrate the tenth
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: anniversary of the revolution, almost up to two hundred million dollars.
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: So here's the thing. I'm reading this article from spin
• 28:34
  Speaker 2: I think it was written in nineteen eighty six, called
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: the Terrible Truth about band Aid. And so at the time,
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: there were a lot of aid groups working in Ethiopia,
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: and if you said anything about how the government was
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: taking this like aid money and using it for themselves
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: and not distributing it correctly, they were trying to put
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: tariffs and taxes on aid ship into the country just
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: to make money off of it. If you said anything,
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: your group would get kicked out. And apparently Medicine Songs
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: Frontier Doctors without Borders had raised the alarms and they
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: got kicked out of Ethiopia. And they went to Bob
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: Geldoff and said, hey, we know you have one hundred
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: and fifty million dollars that you're about to give to Ethiopia. Yeah,
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: let us tell you what's really going on there. Yeah,
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: and then you just wait until there's a stable government
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: to give it to. And he was like, no, it's fine,
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: it'll be fine. I'd rather work with these devils and
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: help these people out a little bit than just not
• 29:37
  Speaker 2: And a lot of people say that he he was
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: extremely reckless and basically just gave one hundred and fifty
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: million dollars to an autocratic government that was creating a
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: famine in its own country.
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: Is that a new article.
• 29:48
  Speaker 2: No, it's from nineteen eighty six.
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: Oh wow, all right, I need to check that out.
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's called The Terrible Truth about Live or about
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: band Aid.
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: About band Aid. Yeah, well, there's a great book in
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: this same article reference that you sent a Nobel Prize
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: winning economist's name, Martya Senn wrote a book called Development
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: is Freedom and basically kind of backs up what we're
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: talking about. Sin says that, you know, authoritarian systems are
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: the ones who have famines. And they went back and
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: did a historical investigation and these are twenty century famines.
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: Thirty major famines that happened were all in countries led
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: by autocratic rule or that were under armed conflict at
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: the time.
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And this article from I wish I knew who
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: wrote it. I feel terrible, but it was in HuffPo,
• 30:34
  Speaker 2: So there you go. The author said, there's a country
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: right next to Ethiopia that has a lot of the
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: same weather, a lot of the same soil conditions, growing conditions,
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: crop land. Botswana. They said, Botswana is a democracy, Yes,
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: and it has been sixties. Yeah, it has been since
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: the sixties. And since it's been a democracy, it's never
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: had a famine. And it's right next door to Ethiopia.
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: Well, yeah, And the whole idea there is that if
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: resources were not being allocated properly, the people would have
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: a voice and change the people in power. But when
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: you're under autocratic rule, you're either completely squashed or so
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: disregarded that they don't care if you are dying. Basically,
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: they are in power and they can't do anything to
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: change it.
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: Right, They don't need your vote or your support because
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: they got a barrel of a gun at you. That's
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: how they stay in power.
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah. A group called Human Rights Watch, which is great.
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: I know we've talked about them before. In twenty ten,
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: they did a report called Development Without Freedom How AID
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: underwrites repression in Ethiopia, and it just completely confirms all
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: of this. Yeah, that's just it's suppression of a people
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: and watching them die and not caring.
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: And it's still going on. So let's take another break
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: and then we'll talk about Ireland and then we'll talk
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: about how to combat famines. So, Chuck, I think when
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: most people think of famine, they think, if not of Ethiopia,
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: then of Ireland, because Ireland had one heck of a
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: famous famine back in the nineteenth century that actually created
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: Ireland and the Irish as we know him today.
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the Irish potato famine are cohorts our colleagues, Tracy
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: and Hollyott. Stuff you miss in history class?
• 32:53
  Speaker 2: Do they do one on it? Yeah?
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: I did a great episode just on this. I recommend
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: listening to that. But here's our knuckleheaded overview. This was
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: also called the Great Irish Famine and their famine of
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: eighteen forty five to forty nine, because that's when it happened.
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: This was one of the ones that initially was caused
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: by disease it's called late blight, and it basically destroyed
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: kind of every part of the potato.
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the leaves, the roots, which I mean, if you're
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: eating a potato, the root is what you're after. Sure,
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: they had a I guess a cold, rainy spring.
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's kind of a perfect storm of bad luck.
• 33:37
  Speaker 2: Right, and this microbe showed up from North America accidentally,
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: from what we understand. Yeah, and so there were three
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: successive years of dead crops. And one of the reasons
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: why this had such an impact is that by this time,
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: by the middle of the nineteenth century in Ireland, there
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: were a lot of Irish farmers who were basically subsistence farmers.
• 33:59
  Speaker 2: A lot of farmers in Ireland were small, small land
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: farmers who were tenant farmers, which means they work the
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: land and they had to give up a substantial amount
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: of their crop yield, in this case to Great Britain,
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: which held Ireland under colonial rule at the time. Yes,
• 34:17
  Speaker 2: and they could keep a little bit for themselves to
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: keep their family alive, so they could come out and
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: work the fields for another day. Right. Yeah, most of
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: those people depended almost exclusively on potatoes.
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, not only for income, but like what they ate
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: on a daily basis exactly so for their nutrition. And
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: not only that, but they they had whittled it down
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: to just a couple of varieties of potato.
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: It's like the problem with quem wa.
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like that's bad news if disease strikes or
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: blight or something like that. If you've got just a
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: couple of varieties and you're dependent on that as a nation.
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: And they're both susceptible to that blight.
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, then you're screwed. Right, And that's exactly what happened. Yeah,
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: it said in the early eighteen forties, almost half the
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: Iris population depended almost exclusively on the potato for diet,
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: and especially the rural poor farmers. And in eighteen forty
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: five that that strain it was called fido fido thora.
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: I think so, I think there's got to be some
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: silent letters in there.
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: There's a lot of continents strung.
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: Together, and like you said, that came from North America
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: and everything just rotted. And this was the natural part
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: of it. So then you have England, the controlling body
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: like needs to step in and do something, and they
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: kind of did, but not to chin up.
• 35:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, keep that grain coming our way.
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there was a Prime minister named Sir Robert Peel
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: and he he provided a little bit of relief. He
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: authorized import of corn from the United States. It helped
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: avoid a little bit of starvation, but it was certainly
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: not a problem.
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: No, And again they really did say, we're sorry you're
• 36:04
  Speaker 2: having these troubles. We'll see what we can do, but
• 36:06
  Speaker 2: keep those grain imports coming, because just like in the
• 36:09
  Speaker 2: Wallow famine in Ethiopia, there were plenty of places in
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: Ireland where there was grain in abundance, but the people
• 36:19
  Speaker 2: growing the grain couldn't afford it. Yes, And so because
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: the people elsewhere were having problems with the potato crop,
• 36:29
  Speaker 2: the price of food was going through the roof because
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: there was less food overall, and the people back in
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: Great Britain still typically had money to pay for this food,
• 36:39
  Speaker 2: so they were exporting the stuff out of Ireland during
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: a famine for their own consumption, including live stock which
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: must be fed that grain. So to add insult to injury,
• 36:51
  Speaker 2: they were saying, you guys are starving over there. Keep
• 36:54
  Speaker 2: exporting that grain, but feed some of it to your
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: live stock, and then export the live stock to us
• 36:59
  Speaker 2: to eat.
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: Well. Yeah, and not only that, it was just so compounded.
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: It's just like so frustrating to look at, like through
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: a modern lens of like things that they could have
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: done differently. But these poor farmers, like you said that
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: they were farming a lot of time on farms owned
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: by British absentee landowners. They couldn't farm all of a sudden,
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: so they weren't getting paid. So then they in turn
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: couldn't pay rent back to the landowners, and so they
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: were basically evicted. Hundreds of thousands of tenant farmers were
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: evicted under these years, and there was in eighteen thirty four,
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: there was something called the British Poor Law enacted in
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: eighteen thirty eight in Ireland that said able bodied indigens
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: were sent to a workhouse rather than given relief. So
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: now you're sent to a workhouse, you're not even like
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: farming the land that you lived on to provide for
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: your family, right.
• 37:50
  Speaker 2: Which is a terrible, terrible move in any famine. Part
• 37:53
  Speaker 2: of the spiral that spiral out of control of famine
• 37:56
  Speaker 2: is something called livelihood shock, when farmers who can still
• 38:02
  Speaker 2: conceivably grow food get priced out of their own crop
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: land and they can't afford to work any longer. Your
• 38:13
  Speaker 2: food supply is taking a further hit, which you should
• 38:17
  Speaker 2: not allow to happen. But the British government definitely did
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: allow it to happen. The guy who came after John
• 38:23
  Speaker 2: Peel or Robert Peel, not John Peel. The guy who
• 38:28
  Speaker 2: came after Robert Peel, Lord John Russell, he did even
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: less than Peel did, basically kicked it back to Ireland
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: to deal with. But still give us your export that
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: grain to us and we'll just leave it to the
• 38:42
  Speaker 2: free markets. If you ever leave dealing with the famine
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: to the markets to hammer out, you have abdicated all
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: responsibility for dealing with that famine. That's not okay. The
• 38:55
  Speaker 2: markets aren't equipped to deal with the famine. The famine
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: happens when the market's break down.
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: Right, and you need assistance to correct that right, it
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: doesn't just work itself out. So you know, Ireland already
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: is not so happy to be under the thumb of
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: the British. This got even worse when there was this
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: sort of attitude among sort of the elite of England
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: that you know what this is, This is really just
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: a sort of a correction because you know, those Irish
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: all they do is have children, and there are far
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: too many of them anyway, these poor Irish people have
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: ten kids, so this is sort of a necessary correction
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: in the long run.
• 39:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Apparently at the time that was a bit of
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: the mentality of the intellectuals of England.
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so that's not going to do yourself any favors
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: as far as getting along.
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: No, And one of the other things that happened was
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: a consolidation of wealth. Like all of those small farms
• 39:54
  Speaker 2: that were that people were getting kicked off of because
• 39:57
  Speaker 2: they couldn't pay their rent. There landlords couldn't afford the
• 40:01
  Speaker 2: farms any longer either because they weren't able to collect rent, right,
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: and so wealthier landowners said, I'll buy your farm and
• 40:08
  Speaker 2: your farm, and your farm and your farm and your farming. Here,
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: go buy some corn. You can get it from the
• 40:12
  Speaker 2: soup kitchen over here, and then they put it together.
• 40:14
  Speaker 2: So these small farms that formed these communities now were
• 40:18
  Speaker 2: single large farms owned by single wealthy landowners. As a result,
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: it's kind of like that saying, if there's blood in
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: the streets by real estate, right, that's what those guys
• 40:27
  Speaker 2: were doing. Yeah, not cool.
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: So in the end, this had a huge effect on
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: the I mean, the way they put in this article.
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: The demographic history of Ireland directly calls from the famine.
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: Their population of about eight point four million in eighteen
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: sorry eighteen forty four fell to six point six million
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: just seven years later, and about a million people died
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: literally just died from starvation. And by the time Ireland
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: achieved independence in night ten twenty one in nineteen twenty one,
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: the population was barely half of what it was in
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: the early eighteen forties. Yeah, because then that's not supposed
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: to happen.
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: Death and immigration, Yeah, how many people? Uh? Another two
• 41:13
  Speaker 2: I think a million died and another two million emigrated
• 41:16
  Speaker 2: as a result.
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah. New York City, baby.
• 41:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's how New York got to be in New
• 41:20
  Speaker 2: York yep. So we've got we've got a pretty good
• 41:25
  Speaker 2: idea of what famines are, how they happen. There is
• 41:28
  Speaker 2: still that struggle between how much of it is man
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: made how much of it is natural. I think it's
• 41:33
  Speaker 2: a combination of the two at this time. Sure, but
• 41:36
  Speaker 2: how do you prevent something like a famine, Chuck.
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: Well, there's a lot of controversy, and there's a lot
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: of controversy surrounding it, and a lot of people rightfully
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: are saying that even AID groups, like what we're doing
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: is putting a band aid on something, and they're not
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: like getting to the root of some of these problems.
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: And aid is great, you know, it's keeping people alive.
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: I'm not saying don't do that, but it's not addressing
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: the real problems.
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: Right And apparently the real problems are autocratic rule.
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: Well one of them for sure, Yeah. Yeah. Another one
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: is you know, just food education. There are food for
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: work programs which apparently are working out pretty good, so
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: they'll have you know, I think they will deliver some
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: food aid to get people able bodied enough to work
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: and then try and get people working on infrastructure jobs
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: in the country.
• 42:31
  Speaker 2: In exchange for food.
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, in exchange for food, and I would imagine money,
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: I don't know that for sure, but I don't think
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: it's straight up food.
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: I wonder if like, yeah, I wonder.
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: Maybe it seems like it'ld be a combination of the
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: two or maybe not. I don't know.
• 42:45
  Speaker 2: Another one is hashing out early warning signs lackly. They
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: have different scales now of food security to kind of
• 42:57
  Speaker 2: gauge where a country is is far as it's spiral
• 43:02
  Speaker 2: towards famine.
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, like don't wait till you're seeing the UNISEF commercial
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: right before you act.
• 43:07
  Speaker 2: But not only that, you government of this, the people
• 43:11
  Speaker 2: that are about to enter into a famine, you need
• 43:13
  Speaker 2: to do certain things, like there's a famine that is
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: I believe Ethiopia is on the verge of another one
• 43:20
  Speaker 2: again right now. And part of the problem is the
• 43:23
  Speaker 2: government denied that this was that this was happening, that
• 43:27
  Speaker 2: there was going to be a famine. They said, we
• 43:29
  Speaker 2: have food security, yeah, and they the author of that
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: huff Po article pointed out, no, there's plenty of food,
• 43:35
  Speaker 2: but it's too expensive in a lot of places, so
• 43:38
  Speaker 2: that's not food security. And they didn't do enough, like
• 43:40
  Speaker 2: they didn't tell cattle herders to move their their herds
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: closer to like reliable water sources. They didn't. There's steps
• 43:50
  Speaker 2: and actions that governments that care about their people or
• 43:53
  Speaker 2: care at least about the food supply can take. And
• 43:57
  Speaker 2: there are early warning signs and apparently they are born
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: out of famine codes from nineteenth century India.
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: Oh really, India.
• 44:05
  Speaker 2: Had a string of famines in the nineteenth century that
• 44:07
  Speaker 2: killed like seventeen million people. Yeah, so they really started
• 44:10
  Speaker 2: to pay attention to what made up the warning signs
• 44:13
  Speaker 2: of famine.
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: Well, there is something it was created in nineteen eighty
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: five and it may have been based on what you're
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: talking about, called the Famine Early Warning Systems Network, and
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: they monitor these trends and food prices, food security and
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: basically you can compare it to other years, other areas
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: and right now, because I want to see like kind
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: of what the current state of the world was, there
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: is a global alert. Emergency food assistant needs needs are
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: unprecedented in these four areas right now. Nigeria, Yemen, South
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: Sudan and Somalia are the most of the areas of
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: the highest concern and it has the reasons of concern
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: right here Nigeria, the Boco Harem conflict, so there you
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: have it right.
• 45:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it doesn't have to be a dictatorship being lazy.
• 45:05
  Speaker 2: You can be in the middle of a war torn
• 45:07
  Speaker 2: country and people aren't growing crops like they normally do
• 45:10
  Speaker 2: when a war is not on.
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: So there's one. In Yemen, extensive conflict has reduced incomes
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: and food prices remain elevated. South Sudan conflict severely disrupted trade,
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: humanitarian access, and livelihoods. Then finally Somalia. Somalia was the
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: only one of the four that seemed like it was
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: weather related, and it said that the December on as
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: pronounced the eyr season. There are two rainy seasons, the
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: goose season and the day or deer deer season, and
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: apparently they've both been below average. So it looks like
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: in Somalia it's due to rainfall, but elsewhere it's you know, conflict, conflict, conflict.
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: So if you care, if you want to help, if
• 45:53
  Speaker 2: you want to make a difference, look around, do your research,
• 45:58
  Speaker 2: find an a group that you feel good about, and
• 46:02
  Speaker 2: give money, give time, do something. Don't just sit back
• 46:06
  Speaker 2: and eat your big mac and forget about the whole thing.
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: Agreed.
• 46:09
  Speaker 2: If you want to know more about famine, you can
• 46:11
  Speaker 2: type that word in the search bar at howstuff works
• 46:13
  Speaker 2: dot com. Since I said search par it's time for
• 46:15
  Speaker 2: a listener, mayil.
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: I think this one Trump's homelessness. Surely we won't get
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: an email saying that people deserve children deserve to die
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: every four seconds.
• 46:26
  Speaker 2: I don't know if we do, we'll get they'll all
• 46:28
  Speaker 2: start with I believe in a vengeful God.
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: All right, I'm gonna call this one. Whatever happened to
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: super fan Sarah? Remember that?
• 46:37
  Speaker 2: Mm hm? I remember Sarah Sparrow, the amazing twelve year
• 46:41
  Speaker 2: old fan.
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: Right, yeah, So I listened to several podcasts per day, guys,
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: to learn something and to drown out the buzz of
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: the office I work in. I was going through so
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: many that I had caught up to the President, forcing
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: me to dig way back to the archive instead of
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: waiting for the newest one. So he's sandwiching, right, That's fun,
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: Just the way to do it. The end of the
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: podcast in twenty ten about grandfather's diets shortening our lives fascinating.
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: By the way, this is June twenty ten. You got
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: the email from Sarah, who had been listening to the
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: show since she was eleven. At the time she was thirteen,
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: you mentioned you should go to our high school graduation
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: be the keynote speaker. You were still doing this well
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: twenty seventeen. My math is right. Then Sarah is twenty
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: years old. That's crazy and halfway through college.
• 47:29
  Speaker 2: It's so crazy.
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: So I hope you guys don't feel too old. But
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: I think is an exceptional accomplishment. You're still doing the show.
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: You're more popular than ever. Keep up the good work.
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: Josh Taylor and Josh you know he asked about Sarah.
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: Sadly we haven't heard from Sarah in years.
• 47:44
  Speaker 2: Were like the giving tree, we got ditched.
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: She ditched us, and or she just you know, still
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: listens and doesn't write.
• 47:51
  Speaker 2: In right, it's plainly cool.
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: Maybe so well she is, you know, twenty years old, right,
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: it's not super cool to still be the Sarah the
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: amazing seven for eleven year old man.
• 48:01
  Speaker 2: You're smelly old pseudo uncles.
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: But Sarah, if you were out there, hit us up, yeah,
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: say hi, send us an email. We would love, love
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: love to hear from you.
• 48:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well even guaranteed read it on the air.
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: And you know what that goes for you too, Sam,
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: who is in College Summer of Sam Sam. So all
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: of our younger listeners, like, they grow up and they
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: forget about it.
• 48:24
  Speaker 2: It's true, so sad, but then they turn like forty
• 48:27
  Speaker 2: to fifty and they'll come back. They'll be back. Well,
• 48:32
  Speaker 2: if you want to get in touch with this for
• 48:33
  Speaker 2: a while, make us feel pretty good and then forget
• 48:35
  Speaker 2: about us, you can send us an email to Stuff
• 48:37
  Speaker 2: podcast at house. Stuffworks dot com and has always joined
• 48:40
  Speaker 2: us at our home on the web, Stuff Youshould Know
• 48:43
  Speaker 2: dot com.
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
• 48:49
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• 48:53
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