Episode Transcription

Hey man. What's going on brother. I'm happy to be here. Me too. Good. Are you happy to be here? Ah! Ah! Ah! Oh. Jim. Ah! Oh! Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait! Look, that's what, look! Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. I'm never going to hurt you. And then look. Oh god. Oh no, no. Oh! I don't know when that photo was taken, that could have been taken pre-war, because he's an obviously an adult by the time he's taken it. This is my pre-war photo, yeah. Yeah. And so this was a... Isn't it crazy that all photos of us right now are pre-war? Things I learned last night. Yeah. I kissed to that. Have you ever heard of Fred Soeper? Fred Soeper. Oh, you're loving black and white photos these days. You're loving going way back. This is kind of brown. Fred Soeper. Dean here riding a donkey in Jerusalem. Is this Jerusalem? No. I had to wait so long for you to take a sip of water. I was trying to hit you with Jerusalem at the right time. No, it's all right. But it is like an 1800s brick building in the background with a straw roof. Yeah, it's like this roof. This roof with a straw roof. Yeah, this roof would get blown off by a big bad roof. You know, he helps and he puffs. That's accurate, actually. So very dead-on. Now, here's another photo of Fred Soeper a little bit more. All right. A little bit more flirty. I like this. Yeah. Too late for that mustache. Glasses don't fit the face. That's good. Yeah. Wait, too late for the mustache? Yeah. Or this is too early. I don't know when they did this photo. This photo might have been early enough because he was alive at the time. It is a mustache of the person whose name we can't say. Yeah. But he was around at the time. Well, the more. He was around at the time. So like, oh. So this story takes place after, but this photo could have been taken before. You know, like this is like, he was around at the time where it's like, we could have not known. There's potential. There's potential. Yeah. Or he saw the pictures of them and was like, I like that style. I like that. Let me take that to my barber. Okay. Let me take a picture of that to my barber. No, Fred Soeper is an interesting guy. I think the place to start with this is actually World War II. Because during World War II, something interesting was happening. General MacArthur, we talked about MacArthur on this podcast before. He was. He's the guy on ESPN. What? He's got that show. He does the, he's really annoying, but he does the, you know, he's like, he's like the young guy on the younger guy on the panel. Everyone. I can't think of who MacArthur would be on ESPN. You can't. For real? No. Who are you trying to say? That podcast TV show thing. And he was like punter for that. Oh, oh, why would you, why would you say my car there? Because what's his last name, Tim? I don't remember. MacAfee. MacAfee. You're right. There we go. That's why I said MacArthur. And then the bit drug on so long because you didn't know who I was talking about. You're right. You're right. Anyways, just MacArthur with his car. Oh, I'm so annoyed already. Just MacArthur with his car. We did talk about him in, I don't, I don't remember which episode. Yeah. Too young to be wearing this pants that high. No. I think we should bring it back. High pants? Yeah, dude. Yeah, if you saw a guy wearing this. It likes your body better. No. Yeah. It makes you look weird. No. That does not fit your body well at all. It fits your body better, but the reason that we moved it further down to the waist where most people wear their pants now is because people wanted to artificially decrease their waist size. And so they moved it down because you can fit tighter pants. I'm telling you, that's what happened. I think it looks so weird wearing your waist. Yeah, but high. But it's not meant to be worn without a jacket is the whole thing. You're supposed to wear the jacket, you know, over the dress pants and wear the pants. I mean, yeah. If you're wearing a jacket like it, yeah. I like, I like high-waisted pants on a man. I don't. I think it looks so bad. Yeah. But to be fair, I also think anything other than skinny jeans looks bad. So maybe mine doesn't count. Brie keeps telling me. I have bad opinions. How hairy were General MacArthur's arms? I don't think we know. I don't think there's any arcs. I don't think we know. Archaeological evidence. Yeah. There was a cave painting of him. And in that cave, maybe we're going to have time for your stupid bits. We don't have time for your jokes. So MacArthur was fighting in the end that you don't have to talk at one and a half. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. We're on a time crunch. So today's episode is going to be pretty on it. Yeah. So Tim's going to be like, I think skinny jeans are hot. I would say hot. I would say they look better than any other jean. I'll tell you what I think is hot. That CPR dummy is still here, thinking about it all day. No. So General MacArthur is fighting the Pacific front. And he is saying, I'm having a problem because for every three soldiers I've got, I've got one that's actually active on the front line, I've got one that's on leave. And I've got one that's in the hospital with malaria. And he's like, we need not funny, but there's the way you go. He's like, we got to do something about this malaria problem. It's infecting everyone in the Pacific front. And so he goes back to the government and he says, what can you guys do about malaria? And they're like, I don't know. It's basically the biggest disease ever. Like, and so like, I don't know what you expect us to do about it. And so through this, the government kind of sits down and says, what if we were to eradicate malaria? And so they looked at Fred, they called Fred Soeper. Fred Soeper was a guy in Kansas who had been working in Brazil in a novel technique because there had been methods for malaria up to this point, but they're all more treatment. What happens if you get malaria? Oh, I'm glad you asked. What are the symptoms? So essentially, if you start out at the bottom here, like right in the bottom middle, you get bit by mosquito. Yup. And a mosquito infects you with the malaria spore essentially. And that will travel into your liver, from the blood into your liver, infects your liver. And then there, it essentially multiplies and it reproduces, and there's this crazy name for it, schizzyogony or something like that. And so then they move throughout your bloodstream, attack your red blood cells. And they can damage your red blood cells, they can destroy them. And moving through that red blood cell, they're now attached to that red blood cell. Okay. So next time a mosquito bites you, that mosquito is now infected with malaria. Got it. And inside the mosquito, it then forms that same thing that's going to get infected, infected next person. And then the... Oh, I see. So that's how it spreads so fast because both on the human side and the mosquito side, there's a development cycle that's unique to the biology of both of those hosts for the parasite. And in a human, what happens is you essentially get like the worst... On the best case scenario, you're going to get the worst flu you've ever had. Okay. So you're going to have a high fever, all of your flu systems. Temporary though? Well, it's going to last a couple of weeks. Sure. Best case scenario, temporary, right? Best case scenario. Yes, worst case scenario. Your liver shuts down, worst case scenario starts killing all your red blood cells. Another one, your spleen could just rupture, your lungs might fill with fluid. And so these soldiers were getting infected. They were getting sick. They would go through the flu. And what would actually happen is they would sometimes this would happen actually while they were in the infirmary. Yeah. Sometimes they would go back out in the combat and they'd be in combat and all of a sudden their spleen would rupture or all of a sudden their lungs would start filling with fluid. And so it was like adverse effects of malaria that were happening after the fact. Oh, yeah. After they thought they were in the clear. And so this was a huge problem because obviously you don't want your soldiers to just randomly be dying. That is not good for war. Yeah, it's not part of your tactic. Yeah, so we're going to send this fluid over here for them. Randomly going to die. We just got to be ready for it. We got to be ready for that. Expect it. The unexpected. And so the government starts putting together a plan to fight this, which was arrogant doesn't even begin to sum up, like malaria by some estimates is the biggest killer of humans in history. It's not just like the biggest disease. No way. Yeah, it's not just the biggest disease is the biggest killer of humans. And so they say that 5% of all humans who have ever lived were killed by malaria. Who have ever lived, not just like in a specific way, but yeah. But also that percentage doesn't, I mean, I guess there's a lot of ways to die, I guess. That makes sense. Yeah. And it was such a big deal, like to the point where, and it definitely is at least 1,000 ways to die. And they haven't they didn't have an episode of 1,000 ways to die, but it was malaria. I bet. I was pretty short episode. I got it. I was, you know, now he's dead. 1,000 ways to die. They did. They did weird bits for that. They didn't. I don't think they would unless it was a weird way he got that if he got a bit weird than they would do it. What do you mean? We should watch, I haven't seen that the only one I remember is a vending machine falling on somebody. Oh, they were all weird, and I'm going to be honest with you, we couldn't watch most of them. Oh, yeah. We couldn't do it on our show for sure. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But they were like, did you watch that show? Now, you were reading books and stuff, said, derogatory, like, no, you were probably reading books. We were up late watching 1,000 ways to die, and then we would fall asleep and wake up to some crazy commercials in the middle of the night. But anyway, we would ever. Yeah. That is a millennial core experience. Yeah. No, but they basically were like, okay, we're going to take the biggest killer of humanity at that to ever exist. And we're going to eradicate it, which is crazy, because we had to go. We're a lofty goal. Yeah, and we had never eradicated anything yet. This was a new idea. Oh, this wasn't. Okay. Yeah. This is World War II. And so we hadn't eradicated. We were attempting. There was things we were attempting. But we hadn't eradicated that disease yet. Really? Yeah. And so in the early 40s, they contacted Fred Soeper. And Fred Soeper was... Isn't that crazy? Less than a hundred years ago, we had eradicated zero diseases. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. It's pretty bonkers, if you think about it. Geez, man. So Fred Soeper, he lived in Kansas, but he had recently attempted this in Brazil. Okay. And what's interesting about him specifically was there's a lot of people trying to fight malaria. But the way they were doing it is they were doing it through drugs. And what you would do is you would take the drug to prevent it, but you would also take the drug to treat it. And so it was fighting the drug, it was fighting malaria in us. And Fred Soeper was saying, fight the mosquitoes, dude. Fight the mosquito. He's like, you're fighting the wrong thing, bro. Real talk. Fight the mosquitoes. No cap. Why did you say, bro, fight the mosquitoes, bro? I don't know, I don't know. Fight the mosquitoes, dude. So he had been using an insecticide called DDT, which stands for, I was going to say, what is DDT said? Die, chloro, diphenyl, trick, low dora thing, nailed it, freaking nailed it. I was nervous going into that, but I got it DDT. And so this is a pesticide. He comes up with a plan where he says, you don't want to see what these mosquitoes were like on DDT. He realizes that a mosquito that has DDT, all you have to do is you have to get it on them. Okay. You can store it into them. Yeah. Oh, wow. And it will carry this DDT for months. And so you could spray once in an area. And if a mosquito lands on anything in that area, it's contracting that DDT. And then that pesticide is going to kill it. And so it's like, we just got to kill all those mosquitoes. And so he takes a map of Brazil, which had a particularly dangerous strain of malaria. And he formats it into this grid and he puts together basically an army of people to fly over, walk through hills and just spray this whole area of Brazil on a schedule. And so that way, there's never a moment where it's not covered in this pesticide. And so that the mosquitoes are basically just perpetually going to be coming in contact with it. And it works so well that the government was like, he's our guy. Like he clearly knows how to kill stuff. And there's nothing more the government loves than someone who knows how to kill stuff. And so they call him. He's our guy. And they basically are like, hey, can you do this in Japan? And it works so well within a matter of, within a matter of months, it got to the point where malaria was basically eradicated in Japan in a matter of months. And so they were like, oh my gosh, this might actually work. So the government sees this and it really does make a difference in the Pacific front in the war. Where are we at in the war? What year? Uh, when soaps involved, let me double check the timeline because that does make his mustache even more questionable. Well, I don't know when that photo was taken, that could have been taken pre-war because he's an obviously an adult by the time he's involved in my pre-war photo. Yeah. Yeah. And so this would have, Isn't it crazy that all photos of us right now are pre-war? Okay. I'm just putting that out there because that's a wild clip. Yeah. Yeah. 30 years from now, we get drafted in the world. Thirty years. Where they're pulled. Sixty two year olds in a big enough war that's what I'm saying. Yeah. That's fair. Hey. I'm not saying anything is impossible. I'm trying to stall to give you time. Well, it was, it, it says by the beginning of 1945. Okay. Okay. So yeah. Yeah. Let's just say. Hey, we just reduced the price of our Patreon to $6.99 a month. That's one price for everybody. You get all the perks. You get the live hangouts. You get to join the Discord. You get early access. Whichever reason you're joining for, we wanted to make it one price because I hate that everything in the world is going up in price. And so we wanted to make this a little bit more affordable for everyone to do. And so, but also, you know, the other goal is that more of you join it so that we can keep funding the show. I mean, like, what, you know, how do I say that? That sounds like we're poor. And we are. We are. No. But if you can't join us on Patreon, no worries at all. Another way to support the show is by sharing it. Please tell somebody you like the show and thanks for being here for this episode. And so they were like, we got to finish this war real quick, but we need to remember that because that was interesting. And so the war ends. And then they basically out of the war room. I don't remember. I can't remember. No, and then the war ends and the US government comes together and they're like, hey, let's put together this organization to actually defeat malaria. And so this is how they start the who, the World Health Organization. So they get who? Yeah. When we started a British rock band, a really sick band to fight malaria. Yeah. A lot of people don't know that mosquitoes hate that song. That was a really dumb bit. Think about how much you hate that song with mosquitoes hate it's so much more. That's that buzzing sound. And it's one of those things where it's like, once you play it, the who stays, you know, you better hurry up looking at the clock. Tim's got to get out of here. So Tim doesn't leave on time. His kid gets put outside. Oh my gosh. So the babies are the Tim hired is on a very strict schedule and it's 6-0-1. Baby outside, doors locked, show is on, all right? So throughout the end of the 40s, the US starts to implement this in the States. Yeah. And what's really interesting about the United States is this was particularly a Southern issue before this. And that babysitter I was talking about is your father-in-law, right? That's what I think your baby's what today? Yeah. Mike is just like, you guys figure it out. It's on you now. He sends a text. Baby's outside. Baby's outside. So through the end of the 40s, they start to duplicate this in the United States. Okay. So this is such a problem that in South Carolina, throughout this point, you had a 16% chance of dying by adulthood from malaria. Oh, that's crazy. That's way higher than 5%. Well, 5% of all of all of them get it to a huge number. And so- That's what I was saying. When you said 5%, I was like, I just didn't sound as dramatic. I guess all of humanity, I guess, for the billions of people who have ever lived. That's a lot. Billions? Yeah. You think in 6,000 years, there's been a, there's been billions now. There are billions now. Oh, yeah. Billions of people who are currently alive. That makes more sense. But- That makes more sense. But- It's probably in the trillions, huh? How many people- How many people do we think have ever existed? I- Here's my ballpark guess. I'm going to say 50 billion. 50. Okay. That's interesting, because we have, I mean, we've been growing my crazy, but like 50 billion. I don't know that, that might even be too much. Yeah. Yeah. Cause I'm thinking it's, yeah, it's exponential. It might be, it might be like the peak. It might be like in the 20s, 20. Yeah. Maybe not even the, let's see. What does the internet say? Uh, so the estimate, uh, from the population reference bureau. Okay. Don't know who that is. PRB. I know who they are. Uh, is 117 billion people. Oh, we were passing pretty off. Yeah. But 100 still. Yeah. Yeah. So five percent of that for 117 billion people who have ever existed and eight of them for right now. Yeah. That's crazy. Kind of wild. That is really wild. But yeah, for that, if, if that number is the number, almost the entire population of the earth right now is how many people have died from malaria in history. Pretty crazy. Which is a huge number. So they started doing this in the United States. And from 1947 to 1951, the government sprayed 6.5 million homes across the South. Um, and they drained the wetlands actually to be able to get the, the mosquitoes out and spray them. Yeah. Uh, and then they, they completely eradicated domestic malaria doing this by 1951. That's crazy. And so they in 1955 were like, here's the deal. We, this worked in Japan, this worked at home, this worked in Brazil. They were like, we think we can pull this off. And so in 1955, they convened the eighth World Health Assembly with 150 other nations in Mexico City. And we're like, here's what we're trying to do. Here's the plan to get rid of malaria. And so they basically penciled together this plan, uh, that would, uh, do this same process in every country that suffered from malaria globally and every member nation of who would contribute financially, right, to pull it off. This is particularly like a southern, the climate has to be warm enough for right from mosquito. Yeah. Cause they're, they're cold blooded. And so they put together a massive budget to go across literally every continent in the world and spray every continent for mosquitoes, uh, to eradicate malaria. The interesting thing though is in this meeting, they decided, uh, uh, they had a vote for whether or not they would extend their eradication efforts into sub-Saharan Africa. Uh, and they were like, do we need to eradicate there? Hey, guys, are we racist enough to not do this? And here's the thing. Like, like, obviously, there is a racism at play at part of for that vote. Sure. But there is a, there is a practical thing where getting, uh, sub-Saharan Africa was had the most, uh, lethal strain of, okay. Um, and so why wouldn't they? Well, it was so bad that to the point that during the colonization era, European colonizers didn't, uh, breach the coasts. And so like the whole slave trade comes from that Western coast of Africa, okay? They never pierced through because frankly, the Europeans would just die if they did. And so every, every, every issue was that lethal. Yeah. So they're saying it's more dangerous for us to go in and try to eradicate this. Well, a couple, a couple of things, um, yes, the suicide mission. Yeah. Yes, it was more dangerous, but two sub-Saharan Africa being so large and so rural, um, that was expensive. Yeah, it was going to be the most difficult to pull off. Sure. And also the most dangerous to pull. And the least amount of white people saved. I mean, there was definitely an elephant in an element of it. You, you, you, you could not, you have to acknowledge that there was a racial thing going on there. Yeah. Um, and so, uh, they elected not to do that there. And which is crazy. Um, and by the end of the decade, uh, in the 60s, they, they did it. They eradicated malaria everywhere for, except for in sub-Saharan Africa, uh, which brings us to the early 60s, okay, JFK pushed for a hundred million foreign assistance to go to sub-Saharan Africa to be able to bring the same sort of eradication effort into sub-Saharan Africa. Okay. It's just for relations of billion dollars, he put towards eradicating it there. So they did a pilot program in Zanzibar, which is 117th of the number of people who have ever existed. Thank you. Just trying to put numbers in perspective. Um, and so they did a, uh, pilot program in Zanzibar and Swaziland and they brought malaria to near zero by the end of that year on the early 60s, 62 through 67. They did it in Granada and St. Lucia, St. Lucia. Um, and so they started moving through, uh, uh, but by, uh, the end of the 60s, obviously, the governments had changed in the United States and the US withdrew their funding, um, for these programs. And so there were some states that got to see, um, uh, a different, an impact made, but some states in the, in Africa, obviously, they didn't, they didn't get touched yet. Right. And what we started to see happen throughout the 70s and the end of the 80s was malaria was exposed to this DDT, but it was not eradicated. So in a lot of these African countries where they started it, yeah, they evolved to be resistant to the DDT. Hey, thanks for listening to this episode of Things I Learned Last Night. If you like the show, you want to support us. We've got merchandise that you can get and it's a good stylish stuff that I made. I put a lot of work into this stuff. So, uh, it's great to find other Tilling fans in the wild and be like, wait a minute, I know that shirt. Uh, and so, uh, yeah, we would love for you to do that. You can pop over to shop.tilling.com or there's a QR code or there's a link in the description. There's plenty of ways to find it. We promised we made it super easy. So, uh, thanks for supporting the show and thanks for listening. So, was our way of doing it, were we like getting rid of mosquitoes? So we were, there was kind of two sides of this. It was getting rid of mosquitoes, but the passive side also killed the malaria. Yeah, it killed the malaria, but I mean like, and so it did, we're mosquitoes surviving? Uh, yes. We still have mosquitoes. It was both. There's not a world where we would have not had mosquitoes after this. No, no, no, no, no, okay, but there was a world that was living that world. We're not carrying this virus. Yeah. It's the world that they created. Uh, and so, what, what, what, what, what function do mosquitoes serve? Uh, they suck blood from people. I know that. I mean, as far as like, you know, how people are like, oh, all, you know, bugs all serve a purpose for the planet. Yeah. I don't, I don't know if those little bug rats do, yeah, that's fine. Bug rats. Um, bug leeches. leeches. They're a food source and pollinators, accidental pollinators, they say. Okay. So they're prey for a lot of aquatic species. Sure. And then yeah, they, they incidentally pollinate. So, okay. If we got rid of them, what would happen? You know, let's find out what happens. What happens if all the mosquitoes die? I've almost get a diet, millions of humans live will be saved. Okay. So nothing bad. But it says about local food, webs and ecosystems would face noticeable disruptions. Disruptions were collapsed. It just says disruptions. Because I feel like that's adjustable. I feel like that's one of the, in my, in my, it's like in my hometown, when the Long John Silver's KFC combo closed, like we, it was a disruption for sure, but we figured it out. That's crazy. Well, they were biting people and sucking their blood. The Long John Silver's. Yes. I don't understand. It was, I was trying to say there were the mosquito of my hometown. Okay. Okay. You were like, oh, yeah. Okay. That's crazy. Yeah. I know you don't get my jokes. You never do. So, there is a, so Bree's dad got me mad. You're, if you show up and eat later than no, but Bree will be. What should I, you inconvenienced my father? No, she's already got him. Oh, yeah. Oh, okay. So this is, this is, this is for taking care of my son in the evening to help make sure he's like, you know, thriving and alive. How's he doing? Is he got a job yet? A girlfriend? He does have a job. He is seeing somebody. It's getting pretty serious. He was asking me about, yeah, like we have proposals and how to do that. How to kiss? Yeah. That's why that's where I was going. That's where I was going. That's where I was going. Yeah. So you two get some of my jokes. No, so, so throughout the, the latter 20, 20th century, there is, they evolved where, yeah, they evolved and it got more dangers. And so, not only did we just neglect Sub-Saharan Africa, we made the problem worse in Sub-Saharan Africa. Great. And so you might remember when we were growing up, like this was a big deal. Yeah, they were sending, it was tense. They were sending those sleep tents all the time. Yes. And so this actually happened in 2003 because George W. Bush read a book called Roots, which was about... Okay. George W. Bush read The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. And he was like, we gotta, we gotta send them nets. And Turkish Delight. Have you ever tried Turkish Delight? No. Have you ever had Turkish Delight? No. Not good. Wouldn't betray my family for it. Reads isn't interesting. Would not follow an ice queen into her castle over Turkish Delight. That's for sure. Yeah, yeah, they're not that good. A little weak soy boy. All right, Doc. Sorry. Hey, you know what? I won't do my part. My part is to do little ha ha and interrupt. Your part is to tell the story. I did a ha ha, okay. So George W. Bush read a book. Yeah, so the book... I'm glad he could read. The book was Roots. Roots traced to this guy's family tree through seven generations. It was like a historical novel. Okay. All the way back to a village in Gambia, which is where his family is from. And this makes George W. Bush fall in love with Gambia. And so he starts making all these trips to Gambia and like getting involved with charities in Gambia. And then allocating funds to Gambia for all different things. And so the United States then launches Petfar in 2003, which is the president's malaria initiative. And essentially what it does is they attributed $5,000 per person to eradicate malaria in Gambia. And this led up to the bed nets. And so what they discovered is through this they discovered we could get everybody these nets to put over their bed for two dollars and then just soak them in the pesticides in DDT. And then the any mosquito that comes in the middle of the night not only does it protect them from the mosquito but it infects them with the DDT. And so it doubles that. So the 2003 mosquito bed nets. Yeah. We were soaking the nets in DDT in pesticides. Yeah. And then having the person sleep inside the net. So we were we were setting mosquito traps. Yeah. With the people as live bait. People in the live bait. Yeah. They're laying there just sleeping there like yeah. And then George W. Bush was like I hope those mosquitoes try to get him. I don't think that's what he was saying. I mean, I guess technically I read a book and the book says that if the people lay underneath the nets. And the mosquitoes will come. And everyone's like Mr. President. There's no mosquitoes in the book. That's not what the book is about. The book was about mosquitoes. The book has nothing to do with this. You know. My friend Lauren. Yeah. Dawson. Yeah. Irland Baugh gets pretty mad when I make fun of W. Bush. Yeah. Cause she thinks really highly of Laura Bush. Yeah. And she says you can't say that George W. Bush was an idiot because that means that Laura Bush married an idiot and she wouldn't do that. That's literally her justification. And I and I got us. So Lauren, if you hear this. Yikes. You know, I have to respect George W. Bush. Yikes. Because we respect Laura. Yeah. And it's funny because the, you know, Bri would not marry someone who's stupid guys. Like you guys don't know Bri that well, but she wouldn't have done it. You know what I mean? Like he's got more. He's holding back more. There's something else he's not showing us because and Bri sees it, but we don't get it. You know. Okay. So she wouldn't marry me. So thanks to Bush. They start. Get your figure out of there. That's going to the edge. Okay. So thanks to Bush, we started fighting malaria in South Sub-Saharan Africa. Sure. And also started fighting. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But and so by 2014, we saw malaria dip to the lowest level it had ever did before, which is kind of like the genuine one for forever. Yeah. And it's like, I wanted to say eradicated, but it's mere eradicated globally by 2014. I should know that. Yeah. It barely exists even in Sub-Saharan Africa. Really? But in 2017, we started seeing cases rise again. And what is interesting is. Yeah. It's an eradicated disease. And you know who hates those. Diseases. I don't like what I can't just let them disappear. He's been. I got to introduce this stuff back into the world. No, in 2017, it was as climate change. The climates started getting the. Oh, man, we are woke lives, dude. We're making fun of RFK. And then also we think climate change is real. If you thought for a second that we were still in our evangelical roots, yeah, like as episode shows that we've grown past it. Yeah. The climate got warmer. The climate got warmer. And so they could survive in more places in the world that hadn't been treated yet. Yeah. And so they started moving further north and further south into colder climates. That's crazy. And so that kind of spread the scope of what we have to hit. And then also. That's really interesting. Yeah. It's something that what surprised you is recently funding has been cut for all this. So we didn't we probably didn't treat places. We treat the entire continent of the United States. No, just the south. So we just. That's a problem. So we didn't treat it like up in Alaska and that you know, correct. North and South Dakota. Those places. There's basically, you could basically run this stretch around the center of the globe is where we were treating it. Yeah, the equator and like some. Yeah, yeah, but I mean like that. Yeah, essentially. Yeah. And so yeah, you go further north further south. We didn't treat there because it wasn't a problem there. And that's the kind of stuff that people like all the global alarmists like the global warming alarmists or whatever. And it's just like, yeah, man, there's so many different like small side effects of this. Yeah, yeah, I would have never. Oh, yeah, malaria is going to make our strong come back because this got worth. That's interesting. That's crazy. Yeah. I love it. Hey. And so why are we let them in here? So and then in 2025, because of funding cuts from the United States, the funding that they who had for this went from 9.3 billion to 3.9 billion. And so now there's even more just flip the number. There is even more of the globe is going untreated, which means we are going to see malaria cases skyrocket over the next few years. Yeah. Because not only is there the climate thing that is stretching the amount of land we need to cover. Yeah, but there's less funding. So we're covering less. And the scary thing about it is we have been doing this for so long. It's kind of one of these things is like once you do it, you have to continue do it because otherwise we're going to see the same sort of thing where they begin to adapt. And so we have to keep it down there. So there is no way of eradicating it completely. Well, if we if we got to zero, if we got to zero, we're done. We we've eradicated it. Then we can stop. We keep we keep making we keep making strong progress. Yeah. And then we take that progress for granted. And we slash funding. Yeah. Until we get to zero, we can't stop. If you know, if we stop, then it comes back stronger. And that's what we're we created this last year. So we're going to see this become a bigger issue once again, which is which is really exciting. But this all goes back. It was crazy about this. And what maybe I can and on a little bit of weird hope, this will be weird hope. But what's crazy about this is this all started because too many soldiers were dying at war. Yeah, from malaria. And so if war soldiers could get infected. Jim, maybe if we can just start wars and climate that have malaria, then we might get this thing turned around. No, but for real, like it is kind of crazy. If you think about it, how many things like we look at a lot of the progress that we made through the latter 20th century. So many of those things started in World War two where we were in this like insurmountable war, where we had to figure some crazy things out that were like, like who would have in industry? We haven't been back into a corner in a while. That's why we haven't been individuals. I'm not I'm not saying that. But what I'm saying is it is incredible to think how many of things came out of that. And how much because it was arrogant to say we could have eradicated malaria. And we almost pulled it off. And so we need a little bit more arrogance. I don't know, maybe desperation is the better thing. Yeah, well, we just yeah, I mean, wow. But yeah, this actually I do want to we don't normally do. But how did things get didn't we eradicated polio? Yeah. How did polio come back? It's very similar thing. We we we pull up we pumped the brakes. I don't think I don't think it was zero either. I don't know if it was full of zero. I thought we had I thought we had eradicated that. I thought we had and we hadn't eradicated like we eradicated measles in the United States, but not in the world. Same. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, we don't never do this, but I do want to shout out this whole thing. The only reason I know about any of this was a couple months ago contagious. I don't know. I don't know anything about polio. We didn't have to get the vaccine. Maybe we did eradicate it. I don't know. I don't know anything about it. Um, but I the only reason I know about this is there's a YouTube by the name of Justin Portella. I'm going to put a link to his video in the description. Honestly, incredible video covered this whole story. Yeah. And he links in that video to a charity. I think I'm going to link to that same charity, too, to help build these nets in South China, Africa. Yeah. I'll find it. So, um, the Patreon.com slash Tillin. That's a bad joke. And I'm not probably out. No, uh, we can find the link. We can find a link and a QR code for that charity. Yeah, give to that, give to that this month. Instead of our Patreon. On top of it. You just don't get to our Patreon. I was like, we still watch our money, but also two other money. I did not. I started a sentence and I didn't, I didn't know where to go. And that was that came out pretty bad. That's okay. Anyways. So that's kind of the story of malaria and how we got truly wild. We almost fixed it. We almost did it. We almost fixed it. Yeah. Anyways, wow. Yeah. Well, you can just tell it. Okay. I was like, I was like, I don't know how to think about creative way to fill this off. Hey, thanks for listening to some of the things I learned this night. If you liked it and you want more of it, we had an episode about the worm wall, which was an effort to get rid of screw worms. It was basically a border in Panama that we, they tried to make a line where the flies couldn't get past it. The flies were killing all these cows and stuff. It was crazy. It's a great episode. Very informative. Actually, pretty similar story. So also, here's the charity. Please go give it to that charity and in advance the efforts for getting rid of malaria as well as joining our Patreon and all the other stuff that we said in this episode. So we'll see you next week on things I learned last night. We do love that you hear and you listen to the show. Please share with somebody and we'll talk to you later.