Can We Feed 10 Billion?

and he was the same way. He was like off at a crack of dawn and just so focused. Yes. So I was looking this up and there's actually this great story from Iowa about the origin of Highway six or whether it's predecessor, called the River to River Road, and it went across the state. Now, apparently, on June nineteen ten, ten thousand farmers and some volunteers started working on building this road at nine am. Do you know how long it took him to finish? I don't know,

like a month, one hour. It took the farmers one hour. By ten am they were completely done. It almost feels like that movie Dave. Do you remember this? So there's this scene where they give the job of balancing the congressional budget to a hard working, honest accountant and he balances the budget in one night. It's that level. If you ask a ragtag group of farmers to build you a highway the width of the entire US state, they'll have it done in an hours. I know, and I realized.

I got this story from the Root six Tourists Association website, and it may be apocryphal, but it made me wonder. If farmers work as hard as they're known to, and if the science of farming is only getting better, then why are people across the globe still going hungry? And what will it take to actually feed the world. That's our big question today. Yeah, hey, their podcast listeners, welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson and as always

I'm joined by my good friend Man Guesh Ticketer. In today's show, we're talking about what it will take to feed the world, scientists playing by the year of two thousand and fifty, the population will be at ten billion people. That's a ton of people and a lot of hungry mouths to feed. So we're going to try to answer that big question, and along the way, we've got an incredible guest, William McCaskill, a professor of philosophy at Oxford

and the founder of Effective Altruism. Yeah, he's amazing. He essentially invented moneyball for charity, which sounds like a marriage of two things that aren't supposed to go together. It's like one of those pitches you hear from an off brand shark tank and you know it's it's like uber but for gymnastics. But his work is really awesome. And we've got another nerd hero on today as well. Right, Yeah, that's right. We've got Josh Miller from farm Shots and

he invented this program in college and it's pretty incredible, wonderful. So, Mango, I've got to tell you, I'm going to start with the fact that's going to disappoint you. Oh yeah, what's that? Well, because today's big question is about how we're going to feed the world. One of the first things I looked up was what we can do to be more responsible with our food choices. I do not like where this guy I know and scientists have this list of eleven

things we should rethink eating. The usual suspects are all on there, like beef, which always gets knocked because of the amount of land and water that goes into raising cattle. Sure, like that's a big vegetarian battle cry, how the land could be better used to grow other things, and that a kilogram of beef takes like twenty times more water

than growing grains, which is sort of true. It takes three times more water to grow beef than raising chickens, and according to new scientists, you could provide ten to twenty times the protein if that land was used to plant legumes. But that isn't what's interesting. Beef is at the top of the list. Then there are things like nuts and chocolate because they suck up a lot of water and resource. But additionally, there are two things I know you love. What's that coffee and you're ready for it?

Fry French fries. Yeah, French fries shouldn't be on that list. I knew you were going to be happy about this. For you listeners out there, Mango as a vegetarian in college, which pretty much meant about eight of his diet was fries. I really want to say it was because there weren't enough vegetarian options. But the truth is I just really

love fries. They're delicious. I don't know if I ever told you this, but when I was ten or eleven, we had to do one of those exercises in math class where we did a budget for when we were grown up, and so we were handed out salaries, I mean hunted for apartments, and we budgeted for things like toilet paper and household supplies using coupons, and we also had to plan out a menu, and I remember thinking

food is a great place to save. So I just decided to stock my fridge with French fries and frozen burritos and pizzas from Sam's Club getting hungry. And the whole idea was just to spend like a hundred fifty dollars a month on food. And when my teacher inspected it and asked me if I wanted to revise it, I was like, nah, I'm good. I was just supremely confident that a plate of fries for dinner every night wasn't just tasty, it was sensible. Makes sense to me.

I mean, can you imagine if we had to commit to our clothing and food choices for life at age and about how terrible we'd look and feel. We're probably wearing umbros and hyper colored shirts to work every day and eating nothing but bags of gummy bears. I know, but I still don't get what French fries are so bad for the earth? I mean, and coffee, I can see that. Like a while back, I read this thing that growing tea takes up more land, but coffee is

a much more difficult crop to rays. That's right. For every single cup of coffee you drink, it takes five hundred and fifty cups of water. Can you believe that? I can't, which is why I only drink diet mountain dew. It's a very principal decision I made a long time ago. But fries around the list because of food waste. As a French fried connoisseur, you probably already know this, but apparently French fries don't taste good when they're cold. Yeah.

My wife and I do this thing where we guess how long it will take for a fast food fry to go from like hot and crispy and totally delicious to completely limb. And it's stunning how fast it can transform into something totally unappealing. I like that, this is the thing you guys actively do. It's also crazy how many fries are thrown out because they aren't good after

ten to fifteen minutes. So in the UK, New Scientists reports that fries or chips as they call them, account for ten percent of all food waste, but the potatoes are only part of it. Fried foods in general are considered wasteful because of all the oils and fats that go into frying up all the deliciousness. So if we use the land for veggies instead, it would be a better source of calories for the population, Which is like a total Sophie's choice for me, choosing between eating French

fries and saving the world. You can't do that to me. Well, I'm so sorry, But let's back up for a second. What actually is the state of world hunger? I mean, there's so many different things written up about this that's kind of hard to keep up. And part of what's confusing to me is that I recently read we currently produce enough food to feed everyone in the world. Well,

those things aren't mutually exclusive. So close to a billion people go to sleep hungry every night, which is heartbreaking, And in two thousand fifteen, the Food and Agriculture Arm of the u N showed that there were seven hundred nine million under nourished people in the world. And while over the past couple of decades we've started to see the numbers drop on that, you have to imagine that this could get worse if we don't start to get a real handle on this. But you're right, there actually

is enough food to feed everyone. How's that. Well. Gordon Conway, who's a fellow at the Royal Society and this heavily respected agriculture ecologists, points out in his book One Billion Hungry, if we were to add up all the world's production of food and then divide it equally among the world's population, every man, woman, and child would receive a daily average of over twenty hundred calories. That's enough for a healthy lifestyle,

which is amazing. But on the other hand, it's not like humans are great at sharing, Like, we're not vampire bats. Vampire bats, Yeah they sound so blood thirsty, Well they are blood, but they're also super considerate. Like if a vampire bat has a couple of bad nights of feeding, it can actually starve to death because the creatures roost together if one bat notices that another is hungry, it'll be a good roostmatee and regurgitate some food for it. Roostmates.

Such a great word. I like the idea of a little bad advertising on Craigslist looking for three hundred other roostmates to share one bedroom in Bushwick. So the vampire bats aren't the only ones. I mean, humans are empathetic too, and they do share food. There was that wonderful story of the man in Saudi Arabia who put a fridge out on a sidewalk and then filled it with leftovers

for anyone to take. And that trend started to spread across the Middle East of people stocking fridges on the street with fresh water and food for anyone in need. And there are those little food pantries that have popped up in America and across the world. You know, people do care. It's just that a lot of little food pantries aren't going to add up to feeding a billion hungry people. Sure, so being more thoughtful about how and what we will be part of the solution, as we'll

be figuring out a better food distribution mechanism. But part of the question too is what is it that's keeping people hungry. And I think I have an answer for you. So I've read some amazing research from Marthea Sen and you know sends this Nobel Prize winning economists, and he showed how famines aren't really caused by droughts or widespread food shortages so much as the rooted in poverty. So how so Well, when I first read that, I thought, how can that be? I mean, a famine has to

be caused by droughts and crop devastation. But his point is that statistically, if you look at these food crises, there's little or no decline in the we're all food

supply in the greater region. Like he analyzed the famine from nineteen three in Ethiopia where weather patterns caused a small region of the country, this province called Wallow to suffer and because the population was impoverished, their ability to grow and purchase food was severely affected, but the overall food production in the country wasn't substantially different from years before.

And he showed this over and over in other places, including in Bengal and other countries where the diminished purchasing power of wages was the root cause of starvation, not overall food supply. In fact, there's this wonderful series called Hungry Hungry Humans. Actually, do you remember the magazine Meat Paper, Meat Paper, of course, so that beautiful indie magazine with all those photographs of meat from a few years back, right, I know, it's so good. I don't even like me

that much, but I loved looking through it. But one of the former editors there, this Berkeley journalism professor named Nathaniel Johnson. He spent six months investigating the food crisis in a series called Hungry, Hungry Humans. And one of the things he pointed out that Marthea Sen also says is that one thing that can help curb of potential

famine is free press. And it's simply because in democracies, politicians have to get reelected, and as long as someone is shedding light on a food or economic problem is going to get addressed before it becomes a total crisis. But you have to imagine the internet and the spread of mobile phones is also great for spreading that knowledge. And you know, currently there's some amazing apps trying to address the problem by connecting food donors with those in need.

But part of what's interesting to me is that a little investment in infrastructure might also solve some of these problems. We don't think about this, but roads and access to villages and town centers actually play a big part in bringing people out of poverty. Like Johnson interviewed a farmer from Ethiopia who told him it takes her four hours just to walk from her farm to the nearest town. And his point is, can you imagine if you have to walk four hours every time you need to get

seeds or fertilizer or anything to raise your crops. And that's not even taking into account getting your food to market. Just imagine how much time she's losing. So a good paved road would ease her situation and helped her have

more of a successful farm. And there's hard evidence that shows this bears out economically, Like there was a study in India in the nineteen nineties that showed for every million rupees that was spent on a road, which at the time was like fifty dollars, eight hundred and eighty one people were lifted out of poverty. And that's not

just them but their future generations. So what you're saying is we just need to get like ten thousand farmers from Iowa over to these remote locations across the globe and get a few roads built in under an hour. Exactly. It's that simple. But before we charter some planes and launch our farmers without borders who adopt a highway program, why don't we break for a quiz? Sounds good to

me for a quiz. Today, we've got Josh Miller on the line, and Josh is a fascinating guy because he created a company called farm Shots right out of his dorm room. Josh, welcome to part time Genius. Hey, thanks for having me. Now, Josh, you graduated in two thousand and sixteen, so you're pretty fresh out of college. Tell us a little bit about farm Shots and what inspired

you to create it. Yeah, so we got started. It would have been the sophomore year I had at Duke, So it's kind of I had of this love for

agriculture and I was studying engineering at the time. I really wanted to find a way to put the two together, and there wasn't really anything out there that kind of did that, except for making tractors, which wasn't very exciting and so and so, I uh, I went back and I did some research and it turned out in the sixties and seventies, there was a lot of research into sensing vegetation, uh from half a days, particularly for finding areas where there might be a disease or a bug

out of the farm. The problem was, back in the sixties and seventies, there weren't really ano satellites for that to be useful. Right, you got an imagine it was really low resolution, maybe once a month. So if you passed forward to when I was about to start the company would have been around two thousand and fourteen. There were all these kind thing is coming out of a woodwork that you know, aboard Elon Musk's rockets, and all

these tiny rockets that we're going up to space. We're putting these tiny, tiny satellites that are about as big as your forearm in space. So all that research back in the sixties and seventies and then be applied to these hundreds and and almost a thousand new satellites have gone into space since that research had happened. And so I went out and I said, okay, you know, can can we turn this Neohle product that actually helps farmers um And it turned out we could, And I went

ahead and I built the first version of the software. Uh, and I'm a terrible engineer, and so it was probably the most awful, like you, piece of software exemplified. But but these guys loved it, right, it made sense and it was something that they wanted to buy. Um. And if you fast forward to where we are today, you know, three years later, Uh, the company's operating about thirty different countries. We're on about ten million acres internationally, very significantly. That's

very cool. So so, Joshua, what keeps you optimistic about the future and growing enough to to feed the world as we're talking about today? Yeah, you know, it's it's kind of funny because we talked about there's a good amount of urban growth going on in places like the US, where you have cities kind of expanding outwards and outwards, which means more people. And at the same time, you know, a lot of what's getting converted to this kind of used land is farm land. Um. So the question is

you've got more people causing less farm land. How do how do you kind of feed those sorts of people? And so I think that's an ever pressing problem that's going to go on for hundreds of years. Any ideas you know, we've got to take a shrinking amount of acridge and turn that into more food. And the homely way you're gonna be able to really do something like that is through applications of technology. M hm. We certainly appreciate what you're doing with the business, and congratulations again

on on its success. So um, so, something equally important is the quiz that we're playing today. Uh, Matt, mango. What's what's our game that we're playing with Josh today? It's called farm Raised where all the answers are people or characters who grew up on farms. And what is Josh playing for? As always our listeners playing for a chance to win a handwritten note from us to his mom or his boss, singing his praises. All right, so

this should be easy. What we will do is we will give you a bit of pop culture and you tell us which farm boy or girl we're talking about. Okay, we've got five questions for you. The steaks are very high. Okay, how many do I have to get? Right? Well, we'll see, we'll see. We'll have to turn to the judges in a bit. So um they are I'll go ahead and warn you they are incredibly difficult questions. So let's see

what we can do, all right. Question number one. This superhero grew up on a farm in the town of Malville and was raised by his adopted parents, Ma and Paw Kent, who kept him away from Kryptonite. Who would this be, Well, Superman, it's Clark Kent, alright, one for one. Question number two. We'll see, we'll see. They may get harder, so we're not alright, So here we go. This pop star behind Shake It Off famously grew up on a

Christmas tree farm in Pennsylvania. Also, at the two thousand ten Grammy Awards, she won more Grammys four than Elvis would ever win. Being three. Who was this artist Taylor Swift? Wow? So smart? Alright? Question number three? This Civil War general who later became president went into the military because he was a terrible farmer. Also, he once got a speeding ticket for traveling too fast on his horse. Who would

this be? Oh? Wow, um wow, Yes, I have a feeling he knew that when it was just kind of pausing for dramatic effects. I think that's right. Well, I almost said Abraham Lincoln, and then I was like, oh wait, that's question number four. This Star Wars hero grew up separate from his twin sister on a moisture farm in Tattooing. This was years before he would train with Yoda. Who are we talking? Oh this is Skywalker. Yes for the final question, you know, take your satellites to that. All right,

here we go question number five. This rancher's daughter grew up to be the first woman on the U. S. Supreme Court. While serving on the court, she used to run a jazzer size class in the building for clerks. Who was this? Oh? Wow, do I get like a lifeline? Can he go? Five for five? First woman on the U. S. Supreme Court? The first woman on the U Supreme Court? Uh? Do I get that? So? I'm no life? Can't call my mom? Uh? So the middle name would be the

opposite of night Daddy O'Connor. So tell tell us what tell us what he wanted today, Mango, Because Joshua an astounding five for five. In addition to this hen written note we're sending him, we're also going to send him a sender day O'Connor finger puppet, which is a collector's item because it's the only sender day O'Connor finger puppet we could find online. So congratulations Josh so much for playing Gosh. Thank you. So before we get back to this question of how to feed the world, I want

to talk about carrots mango, specifically baby carrot. Okay, so here's the thing. You and I have basically grown up with baby carrots, right, They've always been around and offered as this nutritious option with lunches and whatever. But the truth is there a pretty recent invention. According to the Carrot Museum, which, as you know, is my go to for all carrot related knowledge, this California farmer, Mike Eurosic was throwing out a ton of his carrot crop because

they looked deformed. They were perfectly good, but because consumers don't want to buy a gnarled carrot, farmers in the eighties would regularly toss out about a third of their crop. So Eurosi decided why not try to remarket this thing. He took a peeler and trimmed down the carrots and came up with two varieties, baby carrots, which obviously took off, and bunny balls, which did not. Yeah, I think they were supposed to look like cheese balls, but I pretty

sure they could have used the different name. And while this took place in the eighties, my point is this their innovations, both big and small, which can create less food waste. Carving a cute character two out of a bigger, uglier carrot is certainly one thing. But here's something that's even stranger. Scientists in Virginia Tech have figure down a process to make the cob part of the corn on

the cob edible. Basically would turn all of that undigestible cellulos into good starch, which would have the potential to feed millions more people. That's so insane. Do you think future generations will still eat corn the same way and hold cobs horizontally like at a tradition or do you think they'll start attacking it more like a banana. That's

a good question. Who knows. But here's another innovation. Apparently scientists that Texas A and M figured out a way to make cotton seed, which are currently poisonous, into an edible product. And according to Scientific American, the proteins and the cotton seed that are already being harvested every year would be enough to feed five hundred million people. That's that's just insane. So of the one billion people out there going hungry right now, some crazy corn and cotton

seed could actually feed half of them. I mean, that's assuming chefs can sell people on the taste. Yeah, I guess that's true. Like how the US government taught people to eat calamari, right right, Like back in the nineties, the government was worried about over fishing off things like cod and had dick, so they asked chefs and restaurants to use squid as a replacement. And before then squid

was really only used for bait. And this is great salon piece on this from two thousand fourteen, but the government basically sent out approved test recipes and even encouraged the use of the word calamari because it sounded so much fancier and more exotic. But the funny thing is, because restaurant owners didn't want to overwhelm customers, they only serve the squid and appetizer form and that's mostly where

it stayed on menus. Well, they'll be surprised if you see all you can eat cotton seed appetizers at your local olive garden soon. But let's get back to farming, because I think there's some interesting stuff we should talk about. So one thing we should mention is that while food waste and wealthy countries is mostly about people tossing out

leftovers and developing nations, it's mostly about food spoilage. Again, this is something Nathaniel Johnson talks about, but he reports that between thirty and forty percent of food grown around the world is lost annually, whether that's spoilage from not being sealed in airtight containers or being refrigerated properly, or

even things like vermin. And his point is if farmers could deserve even a fraction of this food better, that could actually lift their economic prospects, meaning hopefully less famine, but also address some of the hunger issues. Well, I know that's an area of study that's getting attention. Actually, there's a super simple invention from the guy Mohammed bah ah Bah of Nigeria, and it's one of my favorite things.

So you can guess that food spoilage is a particularly big problem in tropical and desert regions where fruits and vegetables can go bad quickly. But his non electric refrigerator is so simple it's incredible. He basically showed that if you take two earthen pots, and you fill the outer pot with wet sand, and then put your food in the inner pot, and you cover the system with a wet cloth. Well, the evaporation from that wet sand will suck the heat out of the inner pot and keep

the food chilled as low as four degrees fahrenheit. Yeah. So Baba has given away hundreds of thousands of earthen pots in the last decade or so to increase food security. That is so cool. I believe he actually want a Rolex Design Award for this simple yet elegant design. But speaking of design, let's talk about the future of farming. Now, let's skip over the robot pickers and driverless tractors and get directly to vertical farms. I love vertical farms just

because they look so cool. And Jetson's like, I mean, instead of doing your farming horizontally, why not just rotated by ninety degrees. I love this idea too, so, especially because it makes eating farm to table meals easier in cities where there aren't large patches of green to farm on. But what's interesting is that there are a lot of

people criticizing the idea. They see vertical farming as a gimmick because to actually give each plant light and water them indoors, you have to use electricity, which means you're not taking advantage of all the natural resources that outdoor farming does. So what's the solution. I know, they're floating farms, where they're basically farming done on barges and man made islands, but again I've read that's just a supplemented region's food security. It couldn't be done in a big enough way to

really address hunger issues. Well, floating farms are definitely interesting, but my favorite of the futuristic farms is the floating vertical farms. Floating and vertical, best of both worlds. Yeah, I mean these things are so theoretical, but they're beautiful.

And the outdoor floating vertical farm basically takes advantage of the sun and rainwater, it doesn't need land to work, and its shaped like a giant roller coaster loop, which not only looks really cool, but avoids casting shadows on the crops on the inside so they can get sunlight equally, which is pretty cool. I mean, if we're talking pure theory, and this isn't Jetson's futurism here, but it is idealistic.

The thing that totally blew me away was that if we could use the available land in the Congo, that could essentially feed all of Africa. Wait what, I know, it sounded insane to me too, But according to the u n's Food and Agricultural Organization, climate change is going to aggravate food charges on the continent. But the Democratic Republic of Congo is in this unique position. It has

giant territories on both sides of the equator. Basically, there's always a rainy season in the country and only a fraction of the arable land is being used. I mean, apparently there are over eighty million hectares of land that would be great for farms. And of course the DRC has been rife with horrible wars and political issues that

have prevented that di element. But according to a UN representative, the region has the potential defeat up to two billion people, which if we're targeting, maybe that's enough time for the country to solve its internal conflicts. Plus it only takes our Iowa farm core like an hour on roads. Yeah, making peace in the Congo and settling the land does sound optimistic, but so do's trying to get the entire world to go vegetarian, which we'll talk about after this break.

Over the past fifteen to twenty years, we've witnessed the emergence of data and carefully gathered information being applied to several different fields to make people more effective at what they do and how they process the world around them, whether that's recognized through stories like Moneyball and Baseball or Nate Silver's five twenty nine. In the world of politics and sports are through so many interesting works and behavioral economics.

It's been interesting to watch as scholars help us approach these fields with careful reasoning and not just what our gut tells us. And today's guest is helping the world apply this kind of information gathering and careful reasoning to the world of altruism. In fact, he's the founder of a fascinating organization called Effective Altruism. Will mccaske all, welcome to Part Time Genius. Thank you for having me on.

So we'll tell us a little bit about how you got into this field and decided to start Effective Altruism. I got into this field because I was deeply concerned about a problem of global poverty. It seemed to me that given that I was, you know, from the middle class family of a well lost country, and there were a billion people living on the time less than a dollar a day, I just thought, well, why shouldn't I

be doing this? And I made a decision to give away most of my income over the course of my life, to set a cap at what's now about twenty five pounds a year it's dollars, and give away everything above that. Now I'm not going to be super rich, but I'm going to have an okay income as an academic h and so over the course of my life that would be between one and two million dollars. And having made that decision, I thought, well, this is now a pretty big decision that I'm making in terms of trying to

help other people. And so I thought, well's what's absolutely crucial is to figure out not just can I use this money well or not or will it not be wasted? But actually, how can I use this money to have as big an impact as possible? And from that seeds this general idea of asking the question, how can we do as much good as possible with our time and money? That could who game what's known as the effective answers. How did your family react when you decided to catch

your salary and give the rest of it to charity. Honestly, my mom said that's unethical. They took a while getting into it, but now I think they're um supportive. It was definitely, Yeah, I'd imagine that's that's such a big decision. It's kind of incredible. Yeah, And so, well, what are the biggest mistakes we tend to make in giving the charities? I think one major mistake that we make is to

look at overheads costs. So that's where as a way of assessing the efficiency of the charity, you look at how much money does this charity spend on administration and fund raising versus how much does it spend on the program. And it's just a really bad way of assessing whether the charity is good or not, because if the charity is implementing some sort of lousy program, and there are some programs that do nothing, some that are even harmful, then no matter how low the overhead costs are, it's

still not going to be a good charity. Whereas you could have a charity focused on a really effective program, but it just needs to spend say a third of its finances working out what are the most effective ways to help. So, in general, what we should be thinking about is how much money is going in and what's the good outcomes that are coming out. And this is just completely normal and how we think about perch in

goods in general. If you were deciding between buying a mac work or buying a PC, you wouldn't ask yourself or how much does tin cook get paid or how much are they spending on the administration. You just care about the quality of the product and how much that product cost m So how does someone as an outsider figure this out? You know, like if the standard person at home trying to figure out, like I I know I want to give a little bit of money to charity,

what's the best way to make sure it is effective? Yeah? I think the key thing to bear in mind is just in the same way as you know, most people shouldn't find invest on their own because it's just too hard and you're going to end up getting burned. In the same way when it comes to charities, I think the best thing to do is just to find some experts really trust and then go on the basis of their recommendations, and the two places that I recommend most highly.

One is give Well that Give Wealth, the organ which makes recommendations charvities that do more quantifiable UM interventions working in the developing world to improve bubal health and development, such as the Against Malaria Foundation that I mentioned. And then the alternative is at my own organization. On the

website effective Altism dot org. You can go to donate effectively and you can choose one of three different cause areas, so global health and development is one, but also farm animal welfare and programs to have a positive impact on the very long run future of human civilization and which we have identified as particularly neglected and high priority causes UM. And then an expert will return one of the most effective chravities to be giving to in these areas and

then donate. So you might not get quite the same kind of warm glow or warm fuzzy feelings from donating through this, but you will have pens or hundreds of times when potentially well, thank you so much for giving us so much to uh to think about. And as our way of saying thank you, we want to we want to give you one of our quizzes that we have and in every episode, so h so, so mango? What game are we playing with Will today? This is

a game called Who Is the World? And it's pretty simple. Basically, we're going to give you a clue about one of the many many musicians who participated in We Are the World, and you have to guess who it is. So We Are the World was the epic nineteen eighties supergroup song that raised over sixty one million dollars for humanitarian aid in Africa, and there were a lot of famous people singing. So we're going to give you a weird clue about one of the singers and you just have to guess

who it is. Are you ready to play Who Was the World? Okay, here we go, alright? Question question number one this We Are the World. Singer used to be in a band with Art Garfunkle, where his hit song Mrs. Robinson was originally titled Mrs Roosevelt? Who are we talking about? Simon? You got it? Exactually the song was originally about Eleanor Roosevelt before the lyrics were changed. All right, he's one

for one. Question number two, This We Are the World folk singer and recent award winner of a Nobel Prize in Literature famously introduced the Beatles to pot He also took a week long vow of silence when Elvis Presley passed away. Who are we talking about? I didn't know those facts. It sounds like Bob Dylan. Al Right, he's two for two, three left, Here we go. Before his death, This We Are the World singer was trying to build a fifty foot robot replica of himself that would wander

the Las Vegas desert with giant laser lights. You might know him better as the King of Pop. Oh, good guests, but this was actually who was at Mango? Michael Jackson. Michael Jackson, Michael Jackson cool? Alright's okay, here we go, This we are the World. R and B Legend claimed that Mick Jagger stole a number of her moves when she and her former husband Ike opened for the Stones in the nineteen sixties. Who do you think this is?

She has the most famous legs and show business. According to George W. Bush, you know I was born you were born in nine seven. This is unbelievable what you've accomplished. That had no idea? Okay, this was who was this? Mango it's Tina Turner. Tina Turner. Alright, so this last one, here we go, this we are the World Star was actually a Bible salesman before he became a country star. You might know him better as the red Headed Stranger. Yes,

Willie Nelson, exactly Nelson. All right, So how did we'll do today? Mango? Will went three for five, which still entitles him for our biggest prize, our total admirations. Congratulations. Well, thank you, so I hope everyone will check out effect Altruism will Thank you again for all the work that you're doing and for really giving us a lot to think about. Okay, well, thank you for having me on. So let's talk about vegetarianism, which is often touted as

one way to help be the world. You were vegetarian for a while. Why did you fall off the wagon? Yeah? I was a vegining from about age twelve until I was twenty two, I think, and then I moved to Alabama. That's right. I do have to say when you finally decided to eat meat, and we went to dream Land barbecue that only serves ribs and watched you eat that single rib slowly, just kind of licking at it. That has to be one of the weirdest things I've ever watched.

But that's exactly the problem. Like, we made that pilgrimage, which was so amazing because it's just a shack in Tuscaloosa, but when we got there, the only things on the menu were a rack and a half rack. I mean, the half rack is the vegetarian option. Also, the T shirts are just amazing because there's just you know, there's like the white shirt with the hand Dan's just like pulling across the shirts so groty good. I love it. But let's not talk about my inability to commit to vegetarianism.

Let's talk about the world's inability to commit to vegetarianism. Yeah, so this is how our power researcher Gabe explained it to me. Basically, the world would be better off if we were vegetarian. The meat industry is responsible for about fifteen percent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, and all that grazing land, which if you added up, is about the size of Africa, could be better used for growing

other foods. But the problem with everyone going cold Turkey vegetarian is that there are a lot of people who make their livelihood off the production and sale of animal products. In fact, it's over a billion people, and the majority are small scale farmers in developing nations. So if the world just switched to being vegetarian overnight, not only would jobs be lost, but good meat would be wasted and

people would starve. But if we made a slow switch, any eased then to it kind of like dipping your toe into pool. But doesn't that feel impractical too. I can't imagine convincing any of my state loving friends that they should go vegetarian. Yeah, it's certainly going against the grain.

I mean, four to five percent of the population in the US is vegetarian right now, and when the money flows into places like India and China, the populations that gain wealth are actually using that money to eat more meat. Of course, one glimmer of hope here is that meat substitutes are getting better and better. Their seaweed that was recently discovered that tastes like bacon. I'll believe it when

I taste it, which is certainly a start. Their new plant based products like beyond meat and the impossible burger that supposedly taste like beef, and even ooze fats was squeezed on a drill, and their cultured meats or test tube meets, which are still a decade or so away, will basically grow meat in a lab without ever having an animal involved, which is all awesome, but let's get back to the original question, what will it take to feed the world. I mean, clearly it's complicated and there's

no silver bullet solution, so people are trying everything. There's talk of flour made from insects, there's precision agriculture, which could use technology to monitor crop health and increase crop yields. There's so many potential solutions for slivers of the problem.

Plus all the things that we talked about, new styles of farming edible cotton seeds, reducing food waste and developing nations a reduction and how much meat wheat, oh and possibly farming the congo to All of those things would get us there, and also just trying to help lift the poorest to the poor out of poverty by giving them better roads and access to information. But all of that would take real, unified commitment from a number of

big countries and that's a difficult path. But the interesting thing is there are a lot of positive indicators. For instance, in two thousand fifteen, the UN announced there were nearly eight hundred million under nourished people in the world, which is a lot, but that number was actually down two million from the nineteen nineties, despite there being two billion more people living on the planet now. So a lot of economists and journalists are actually hopeful, which is a

good thing. That is a good thing. And speaking of good things, what do you say we indulge in a friendly little fact off? M m m. It sounds so much more menacing when you put it though, but let's do it all right. Here's a sweet one to kick it off. Did you know that if we switch from using sugarcane is the source of sugar to sugar beets, we would save over two hundred thousand gallons of water per ton of sugar produced, which could be channeled into

growing bananas or something else. I guess no, I think it has to be bananas. Did you know in Congress nearly passed an American hippo bill? Didn't The idea was to bring hippos to the Bayou to eat invasive plants while using them as a new meat source, and editorial pages of the time praised the idea and called Hippo's Lake Cow Bacon Lake bake it all right. So I'm feering off course here because you used the hippo facts

and I'm going to match you with another hippo. Did you know that the eighteen fifties England went through an intense phase of hippo mania when the first one, named o Bas was brought to the London Zoo. So thousands of visitors each day crowded and to see him. Novelty hippos were sold, and there was even a popular polka written for him. O Bach was so popular that Charles Dickens was jealous of all the attention he received. That's so good, you know, I can't top a Dickens hippo fact.

So I'm gonna bring it back state side. Do you know that David Copperfield tried to launch a magic themed restaurant in Times Square? According to the New York Times, the restaurant was supposed to have seventy foot gargoyles, a bar and banquette that looked like it was floating on air, sections of tables that would disappear from view on occasion. And this is the best part. Every hour, a giant spinning saw would appear to cut a dinner guest into

how nice. That's a nice touch. Of course, the Time's article claimed the greatest trick about the place was how thirty four million dollars in investment magically disappeared in the restaurant never came to be. It's quite the trick. That's pretty brutal. All right, here's a strange one. According to a two thousand fourteen study from Westminster University, hungry men find heavier women more attractive, and it goes the same way for women. They like their men huskier when they're hungry.

Apparently it takes about six hours of not eating for your preferences to change. Um. So, Eric Carl's The Very Hungry Caterpillar was originally about a bookworm named Willie. The book changed when Eric and his editor realized there was no transformation. At the end of the book, the bookworm was just fatter instead of, you know, turning into a beautiful biter pie. Alright, So at nine study on leeches

found that drinking beer makes leeches lazy and undisciplined. Yeah, and apparently they're attracted to garlic, but if they eat too much of it, it kills them just like vampires. That's brilliant. I know. The authors of the study even went on to win an Ignoble prize for their research. Well, if feeding beer to leeches is good enough for the ignobles, it's good enough for me. I think you win this round. And speaking of prizes, who do you think we should

give today's award too? Well? I kind of want to give it to whoever came up with the phrase late cow bacon as a synonym for hippopotamus, But I think a better winner might be the inventor Sarah Collins, who invented the Wonder Bag. It's this amazing invention that's basically a non electric slow cooker where you bring your ingredients to a boil in a pan or a pot, then wrap them in this bag and it keeps them cooking

for you. The amazing thing is that of staple foods cooked in Africa end up burned because they're cooked on an open fire. So this not only saves food from being wasted, but it also saves a considerable amount of money on energy and allows families to do other things instead of spending so much time gathering firewood and tending to fires. Plus it's got a great name, the wonder Bag. Wonder Bag. I like it. Sarah Collins, you'll be getting a certificate from us in the mail to put on

your fridge. And I think that's it for today's episode of Part Time Genius. Thanks so much for listening, k Thanks again for listening to Part Time Genius. Be sure to subscribe wherever you listen to your podcast, And because we're a brand new show, if you're feeling extra generous, we'd love it if you'd give us a rating on Apple Podcast. Part Time Genius is produced by some of our favorite geniuses. It's edited by Tristan McNeil, theme song

and audio mixing by Noel Brown. Our executive producer is Jerry Rowland. Our research team is Gabe Bluesier, Lucas Adams, Autum white Field, Madronto, Austin Thompson and Meg Robbins. Jason Hok is our chief cheer leader.