How Big Sugar Runs The World 06.21.23

Hello the Internet, and welcome to season two ninety two, episode one.

Of Daily's I Guys Say.

Production of iHeartRadio. This is a podcast where we take a deep dive into America's shared consciousness. And it's Wednesday, June twenty first, twenty twenty three, which of course means.

It's the longest day is. Summer begins today us get ready, put on your your big sun hats like I did that I got for Father's Day. I will be wearing this woven hat for the rest of the summer that has UCLA branding all over it. Very cool. Also, National Pieces and Cream Day, Yeah, exactly, National Selfie Day, National Daylight Appreciation Day, makes sense, World Giraffe Day, shout out to those long decks, National Smoothie Day, World Human This Day, World Hydrography Hydrography Day.

We'll ask our expert guess what that means.

Yeah, let's go skateboarding day two. I'm also, if you're in Arizona, National Arizona Day, So how about that. There's a lot.

Actually, it's also birthday time, the time of the year that all my I always talk about how I don't believe in astrology, and yet all my favorite people in the world have birthdays around this time.

Over, So who's up today? You got someone today today?

It is especially my best friend since I was twelve years old, Chris who you risk and Jose who you also met at the Brooklyn Show. And then a couple of days ago my wife and the day before that one of my best friends, John. So shout out to all the Gemini and your day, Gemini energy.

Her majesty, her mad days. You know what I mean? It all Look, it's all happening. It's all happening. Well, my name is Jack O'Brien aka.

I saw your thighs and it opened up my eyes.

I saw your thighs.

Is demanding all the plump first stand and I saw your thighs and it opened up my eyes. I saw your thighs. No one's gonna plump you up. To pull up the shorts where they where, the where they belong.

That isy of a lease with the hot takes.

Our expert guest is wondering what she got herself into.

What manner of show? What manner of show is this?

Uh? I'm thrilled to be joined as always by my co host.

Mister Miles Grant Miles Gray the first time Father's Day celebrator and Blasian experimental visual artist Yo Boy Kusama.

But yeah, shout out to a few people who sent me a Father's Day well wishes. I don't even know y'all, but thank you.

I appreciate that first Father's Day. I don't remember mine, but I'm sure it was a trip.

It's all I do is think about it's so weird. All I do is like run back stuff my dad did, and I'm like, did I would I do that?

Is that good?

Was that bad? And half the time I'm like, wait, is that trauma? Trying to like parts through And You're like, but it was normal, man, huh. But overall, fantastic time, fantastic time.

Well, Miles, we are thrilled to be joined in our third seat by an award winning journalist, Auf their public speaker, the host of the new show Big Sugar. Please welcome Celeste Headlands.

Nice welcome.

You guys do that intro all the time.

Yeah, anytime you enter a room, we are available for you know, a small fee.

Yeah, we moonlight as town criers for any kind of dynamic intro. Yeah. Well we can read from a scroll and everything.

Wow, that's I don't know how much work there is for that, but you.

Know, I'm not gonna lie. It's it's feast famine there. I'm sure we don't have to ask you this, but this is that is the dumbest opening to a show that you've ever been on. I have to imagine I probably don't even need to confirm that.

But that's correct.

Oat the crown on. Thank you, Yes, here's your crown King. Well, thank you so much for joining us.

Your new show, Big Sugar is fascinating, kind of mind expanding. Also just kind of crystallizes, to use a sugar industry crystallizes a lot of the things that we aready suspect about the world of capitalism and industry in these United States. So thank you first of all for your work on that show.

It's really cool.

Thanks thanks so much. I mean I learned a lot doing it. Also. It's one of those things where you kind of pull the thread and it just came.

It's still going.

Everything, Yeah exactly, Yeah, but you know it's important. This is stuff you know, I know. Okay, so this is all stuff that we should know. But without diving completely feet first into it, I should say that one of my big takeaways after doing two years of work on this is that I don't think we should have to know this. I think that with all the other stuff we have going on as citizens, as consumers, I don't think we should be responsible for also policing our industries.

Yeah so, yeah, but I got good news, Celesti. We don't have to because that's what the regulators and the government, right.

And they're super well funded and always up to the task. As we'll get into yeah right, all right, Well, we are going to get to know you a little bit better. We are going to hop into all of that feet first. We're going to talk about you know, there's this is just right chuck full of conspiracies. There's a conspiracy to you know, under real real conspiracy.

Yeah.

I guess people now think just conspiracy means conspiracy theory.

It's like something else.

These are real, vast conspiracies to keep the truth about the health consequences of sugar quiet and from affecting how much sugar can be put into things. We'll talk about just this powerful oligarchical family that is kind of at the center of the story and basically like slavery that exists in the United States, you know, basically to this day. Yeah, some of the worst working conditions. So we'll talk about

So I just went through my search history and what I found was me looking up specific answers to the crossbord question for today. Okay, so I looked up a very specific Irish word, for example, which was the name of an Irish god, in order to answer a crossword. And that's personal because I do the crossword every single day, getting very very long strings the crossword and wordle every day. So there you go.

Oh you doing a word wordles about where I'm max out.

I'm excellent. I'm pretty good at word. I mean, I guess I'm pretty good at my average. I get by the third line.

Okay, isn't that that's par right? What is that? No, that's a birdie that's a birdie. Oh is averaging a birdie over here? Okay, that's pretty good. Rights So yeah, yeah, that's pretty impressive. And then on the on the crosswords, I do that too. I google for help on specific answers.

Some of them are like names and like specific yeah I don't know stuff.

Yeah, that actually makes me feel better about myself. I was like, wait, you know about like Celtic God?

Yeah? Wow yeah. What is something that you think is overrated?

Avocados?

Okay, what do you mean? Okay, well, come on expand on that just I mean, I.

Say this, I'm gonna get I'm gonna get email. I'm not because I'm from California. I just think they're overrated. They put avocados on everything, thinking and avocado is improve gonna improve everything, and avocados do not improve everything.

Okay, So example, Okay, what's something that you're like, you can't that's it's this, isn't this isn't that different? You just put avocado on it? Is there something specifically like knock it off with the avocado on that?

I'm just gonna say in general, like there's there's things like there's sandwiches that shouldn't have avocado on them. Like there's hamburgers that shouldn't have avocado means sometimes maybe, but you bite into a hamburger and avocado is this is a squishy piece of food, right, Like that's gonna be a mess, you know, so maybe cool it with the avocados.

Yeah are you? How are you on avocado host that's.

Just on the avocado's hoast, right, you.

Know, favorite avocado dish if you got to give it up to avocados in one form or the other, where is it perfect?

I'm from I'm from California. I mean it has to be guacamole.

Yeah, okay, yeah, I'm just bad at picking. I'm bad at timing the ripening of them. Like unless they're right at the store, I fuck up. And like they're like, oh yeah, three days and then I wait, like the fourth day it's I got worms having a party on the inside. And I'm like, I get.

You can't go by really by color. You have to go by.

Yeah squishy, yeah yeah yeah.

I like it firm like an apple, like I just have it. Crisp should have crush in my book. Interesting and gen Z, I love all of your avocado creations and you know, save yours, save your mail for Celeste, because I'm team Avocado. Okay, team Avo over here, I'm like, oh, by the way, so least i'm a coward just in case. Yeah, that'll become clear, but there will be a lot of disclaimers where I'm like, big sugar, we actually are big fans on this podcast.

You love the Domino Company obviously for everything they've done for us in our Texas, but yeah, I feel like I see now it's funny how like the avocado wave, like it became a thing. I feel like in california're like fifteen years ago where it was just like you will not avoid it, and we're like okay, fine, and people are like, okay, this is cool, and now it is to a part like for me, avocado tuna sands.

That's fucking expensive, but like, yeah, exactly.

I think this pasta dish is fine without the avocado.

Absolutely, spaghetti bowling ace with avocado with avocado, you gotta have some avocado slices thrown in there. I would say, just generally, like sliced avocado on a sandwich, Like I actually really love avocado toast, but like that's a great like to to guacamulli that avocado up so that it's almost like a spread that just like, oh she stays on there, real nice?

Is well?

I feel like we should see more burgers that have like avocado spread. I think that probably the issue there is that so many avocado spreads are just like green, like mayonnaise that's been dyed green, and so people are distrustful of it. But I don't know, Yeah, when when the when the little chunk of avocados like squeezing out every which way?

That's hard, yeah, because it's already like a It's like it's just like the slip reest food anyway it is. And sandwiches are known if when they're made incorrectly, you are like ejecting elements of a sandwich out the size if you bite too hard, it's.

Like avocado and cooked mushrooms, like those two slippery.

Things you have, Yeah, like banana.

If a banana wouldn't like work on the thing, it's avocado probably isn't.

Gonna work either.

Yeah, But we didn't have generations of you know, avocados being slippery the way we did with bananas and cartoons. So right, yeah, all right, what is something that you think is underrated?

So I'm gonna stay with food and say Iceberg lettuce, so I X you know, I'm a child of the eighties, and Iceberg lettuce got such a bad name, right, Like everybody was all about the romaine and the kale and like it had color. But I gotta say, I'm coming back around to Iceberg, like I think it's gotten a bad wrap. So I'm all about the wedge salad lately.

I love edge, right, Yeah.

I think it's pretty underrated.

Quick question we like to ask if you're a big wedgehead you forking knife in it? Are you just taking like a big melon slice?

I definitely not melon slicing.

That is a question we asked all our guests. So I feel like the last time the wedge came up, I was like, you ever eat it just like a big wedge of melon literally already made.

My opinion clear on messy eating knife.

And how are you on blue cheese on your melon slices?

Though? Are you? Are you?

I have recently devised a blue cheese vin a grete dressing, so I don't like creamy dressings very much, but the blue cheese vinagrette I'm all about.

Yeah, playing god with the blue cheese.

Vite Yeah right?

Yeah.

What was the thing though, Like people were just off iceberg because they're like it has no flavor and it's like devoided.

They're zero nutritional value to it, which turns out to be not true.

Ah, there's a little bit stuff like what does that mean? Like what do we get from?

But there is this like ridiculous idea that Romayne lettuce had way more nutritional value than Iceberg. No. I mean, if you're gonna say iceberg has no nutritional value, it's not like romain has.

Way more, right that it's like a super food or something.

It's yeah, it's just a leafy right exactly. So yeah, it's you're just choosing one leafy green over another.

I mean, as a child of the eighties, I mean the I remember the first time someone put like a mixed green salad in front of me, and I almost had a panic attack because like, what is the was yard trimmings? Like where's my crunchy ice.

Also a child of the eighties, you know, and and and my you know, my cafeteria lunches. It was all light, pale green, you know. But there that was all limp and watery, and itd been sitting in there walk in cooler for yeah, I don't know, seven eight weeks, I don't know how long it's sat there becoming goop. Yeah, and that's kind of how it got a bad rep. But iceberg needs to be fresh because it's got all that crisp water in there.

Yes, it is the crispy. It's water in crisp form.

And refreshing, Yes, very refreshing.

I just like to after a jog on a hot day, just bite into a big handful of just a big head of iceberg lettuce.

Yeah, yeah, you love it. I mean that's why you're I think you still can't go to the Whole Foods by your house, right, Yeah? They get mad by that. Yeah, yeah, well look they don't understand.

Yeah, they shouldn't have that myster there being so enticing, you know, but you know it's wild though, too, like because of factory farming and stuff. Like I remember just how romaine let us used to have a flavor, and now it doesn't like when you buy it at the store or like a arugula too, Like I know when I've had like you're like, whoa shit, like some peppery ruge.

Yeah, but now I feel like the rocket, you know, as it's described in other places, it's not coming the same way as it used to. Yeah, so you know, I'll go back to Iceberg.

I mean, I will just say, just in defense of Iceberg, it does have tassium in vitamin A and vitamin K and calcium and vitamin C. I mean, it is not devoid of nutritional con right.

So I wonder who started saying that. That feels like such a weird take because it's like it's still lettuce y'all, Like it's probably big sugar big.

It's probably like you guys should have jello instead, Like wasn't that a big movement in the fifties everything who was green jello replace all salads? Yeah, you have your vegetables and fruits in jello form.

You don't need these. Uh, let us.

Forget about the cuisine in the seventies.

Yes, yeah, man, what a time to be alive. I've heard and the fashion.

Yeah yeah, yeah, i'd always heard.

The other food that I feel like I'm slowly waking up to the fact that it has a nutritional value is potatoes. Like I had always heard, potatoes were just like wonderbread, essentially like the wonderbread.

Yeah, they have like.

A ton of different nutritional value.

Am I the only one?

Did I just maybe like associate too hard between potatoes and French fries.

Potentially, Yeah, maybe I think. But then I'm like, you know, like the Inkings gave us potatoes, you know what I mean. So like I'm like, here, I'll fuck with them. So there's got to be value there.

Potatoes have a lot of nutrients in them.

Yeah, like I said, and I always knew that, adjusting you cut out that part where I said I didn't know that. Okay, all right, So last let's take a quick break, and when we come back, we are going to talk about your new show, Big Sugar.

We'll be right back.

And we're back, and all right, celest there's so much good information in the in your new show Big Sugar. I do want to I want to start with the health conference that I think it's an episode seven. It's a conference about the connection between gum disease and diabetes. Miles what what is that diagram?

Thank you?

Like those two things, like sugar is the thing? Yeah, the gum pops into my mind immediately. Oh yeah, for sure.

I even with my very cursory knowledge of anything healthy, I'm like sugar.

Sure, right, And so you know, as you tell it, there's this dentist, Kristen Kerns who's watching these keynote speakers and they're like handing out brochures and like the brochures don't mention sugar, and like they even mentioned like trying to avoid too much soult and which you know.

Always a good idea.

Yeah, but like it's just wild and she kind of has this experience where she finally like after somebody from I think first keynote speaker CDC, the second one is from like the Diabetes Diabetes Education Foundation and hands out a form that is like how to eat fast food healthfully?

And yeah, I mean the crazy thing is I mean think now about you know all the bad dad jokes about dentists and halloween candy, right, like, right, so many. But we're talking about a time when she's at a conference about dental health and they they're not even mentioning sugar.

Right.

The crazy thing here is her describing going to these archives of the and finds that archives the Great Western Sugar Company, right yeah, and just sitting in these boxes that I guess nobody had ever looked in were all these confidential files, right, And I guess they never realized anybody was ever going to look in there because there was all this information in there, the backstory of what the sugar industry had kept hidden from the public for

Right, yeah, I remember growing up in a world where like the products were fat free, like like you always had a fat free option for your cookies that like I remember the Snackwell cookies, the snack Well sandwich cookies that were like on the verge of just bursting into being crystallized sugar.

Like, so they would put they would put a box of liquoration. It would say fat.

Free, yeah, right right, right, like oh.

Good, great, well this is healthy then right sugar?

Oh, filled up to the gills with it.

Absolutely, It's okay, it's just healthy sugar. And you know, we found these ads dating from you know, in the nineteen fifties, sixties and seventies where they literally said some good natural sugars, you know, and you're like, what are you talking about it? It's it's refined sugar. I mean that's literally yeah.

Yeah.

We did it for a while with corn syrup, right where we were like, well, as long as it doesn't have corn syrup, then it's okay.

And you know, sugar.

Corn syrup was originally seen as a health food product, right, it.

Was an enriching Yeah, it's three game three Carmonte. Right.

They're just like moving things around and you know, trying to make it as confusing as possible, to the point that there's a conference about the connection between gum disease and diabetes and nobody is mentioning sugar, and like that's how recently was that conference that she was at.

I can't remember. I hate to say it, but it would have I mean, I'm going to completely guess and say it was the eighties, Okay, but you know, then we head back and sort of try to trace some of this and talk about sort of the the rivalry between two scientists, John Yudkin, who'd grown up in this very poor Orthodox Jewish family in London, who very early on spotted the dangers of sugar and began to connect

Yeah, it was early, very recent that I.

Think of it, because yeah, his book was published in the seventies, which is what I was thinking of, and she was working in the early two thousands.

Yeah, yeah, And I mean it really seems to come down to there's no individual consolidated like powerful lobby for fat, right, but there is one for sugar. And so the guy who tells the truth that like sugar is really bad for you in the amounts that people are consuming it and could drive an obesity epidemic if it's not controlled, he just really like has his career dismantled in a way that is pretty startling. Like he is a star

But it's like the very long run.

Like this person was a massive celebrity for all his like fat free diet advice. He was like the number one most covered and like media saturated dietitian in for like decades and wealthy, and.

Think of all the lives that were ruined, they weren't marketing sugar as a way to lose weight. And that entire time the documents that Kristin discovered, they were basically running the same kind of campaign that Tobacco ran to try to disguise the damage that is smoking dusty your health.

Right right. So when you because like we talk, I mean like any industry that has like a tangible product has like a you know, substantial lobbying arm because they need to kind of get ahead of any kind of messaging about their products, whether it's tobacco or falsel, fossil fuels or sugar. What Like what is how do the

It started because you know, in Europe there was a leader there who very early on started an investigation into sugar and wanted to put some limits on sugar consumption. Basically at the same time that sugar started to become really affordable. They started to see some of these real health problems emerging. And so as soon as sugar producers start at the same time that they were seeing their profits really going up, right because it was going to

Yeah.

We talk about like how you know, people when they talk about AI worry about the singularity and like this idea that someone's going to create a computer program that's going to like start, you know, become smarter and more advanced than humans, and then like after that it'll just like run away from us and like start doing things that aren't in humanity's interest. And it feels like we're there with capitalism just like unrestrained hyper capitalism, like that

Yeah, and that's one of the reasons we wanted to keep pulling at this thread, you know, because at one point I tried to eliminate sugar from my diet. Yeah, and I got to tell you it took the vast majority of my time, Like it was so hard. Yeah, it's in everything. I had to bake my own bread. Number one, it was expensive, and number two, it was really time consuming. Yeah, because it's in everything and they call it by different names, so you don't even recognize it.

I mean, what are some of the alternate names of sugar that you'd look for?

So I'd have to go back to my sneaky I call it like sneaky names for sugar.

It's like a lot of things with like sucrose or any something open.

Well, there's ones that you expect, but there's things like gallictose. I mean, there's ones you expect, like maltose, glucose, dextros. Those are the ones you know, but then there's like there's and then there's things like dextrin. There's diastatic malt. There's ethyl maltol. There's malted dextrin, which I kind of you know, there's suconot, there's barley malt, there's.

So malt is a any malt.

There's treacle, which people in the UK.

Would I thought that was a word for poop on last week's episode that we did. Yeah, it sounds.

Like it possibly, you know, there's a lot of different words for it, yes, you know, and you have to start learning how to spot it.

Yeah. I mean that is the result of, you know, just hundreds and hundreds of people who are working for the sugar industry and paid really well to come up with different ways that they can get their product in all the food Like it's just it's so massive. Yeah, the average Yeah.

The average American eats almost sixty pounds of sugar a year.

Yeah, sixty.

Oh, it seems like too much sugar, but it is too much sugar.

Okay, it's way too much sugar.

I think of like like sugar just as like a lover of history has kind of been like the magnetic force of a lot of bad things, whether that's like the original crop that helped explode slavery in the United States, or like why we annexed places like Hawaii or Puerto Rico.

In the environmental disasters.

Yeah, yeah, it's does it like is there? I get that there's the big sugar lobby, But is there like a is there like a darker like is there a figurehead or is there like a group of companies or families or something that kind of are sort of have an outsized influence within the sugar industry because I feel like anything there's probably like everybody participating, and then you have like the real movers and shakers of sugar.

So can I talk about just one scene that blew me away? Because then it kind of goes into this question. So Bill Clinton, remember him, Miles, he was the President of the United States when we're hi, President, Yes, is in the Oval office breaking up with Monica Lewinsky, like because he's like, look this, I've made a mistake.

This is like not all bad. Yeah so bad. Oh No, I messed up big time.

And as he's doing that, he's pulled away to a phone call with one of the sugar magnates at the center of this story that Big Sugar is about. Like that is how powerful. He's pulled away by this person who's like the prince of sugar. They're called the first Family of corporate Welfare because of like how much taxpayer money goes into their pockets. But like that is the level.

So that's so we focus on here. And surprisingly enough, much like media companies, there's a small number of people pulling the levers in sugar and two of them are the Funhouol brothers, and one of them is who you were just talking about. And that was February of nineteen ninety six, and Alfi fun Whole calls Bill Clinton and they say, Alfi fun Hoole's on the phone, and he tells Monica Lewinsky to wait a minute, and he picks

Yeah, you were saying that, like when you check the markets, like the sugar prices are like in the twenties in other countries, and in the US it's like in the forties or something like that. It's a double that's twice as expensive. It's so expensive, and we eat.

So much more sugar, Like we should we should get credit for all the sugar we eat at least or yeah, right, like so much more sugar than any human species at all, or any human civilization at any time in history. Give us, give us a deal on all this sugar we're eating.

Don't try to get more.

Wait, why why are the prices locked at that rate? That's because of the subsidies that the lobby is able to extract, like through their lobbying efforts. Essentially.

Yeah, So what we're talking about now is the Farm Bill, and the Farm Bill is a piece of legislation that comes up to be reauthorized every five years, and in fact, this is the year when the Farm Bill comes up for reauthorization. So there's actually quite a bit of lobbying that's going on right now, and in fact, there's a lot of people, including citizens like yourself, who are writing letters to their representatives saying, please do not include sugar

Yeah, just a like you know, apocalyptic.

It's truly like an apocalyptic landscape that is the result of this system that is just funneling money to these like you know oligarchs. You know they are oligart they are you know, are on They can get Clinton whenever they want. I'm sure things haven't changed that much. We just like know about that instance because it was like such a famous meeting between him and Lewinsky. But they you know, there's just so much about like so much just wild.

I should mention that Alfi von Hul's personal net worth is over a billion dollars.

Oh.

He had gone to that sugartown after visiting his yacht and house.

Yacht Yeah, yeah, super hot.

Yes, Yes, it's private yet yeah, I mean massive, massive estate. You can't we could not get anywhere near him. And this is one of the things that I came away with after all this reporting is that if you're wealthy enough to the United States, you don't have to answer questions about your Yeah, you don't have to answer questions.

Miles.

You mentioned the Lanisters and I do just you know, and when when you guys dig back into like how their you know, sugar empire was built, Like they built their fortune by like marrying different sugar producing families, like very much, just this soulless kind of power consolidation thing

Yeah, they know what, they know what I like, They.

Know what I like.

They keep they have like they do photographs. They take photographs of the room when he leaves, so that it's like exactly everything's exactly where he wants it to be when he comes back, and like that is the that is what you are buying, I guess with this just soulless, horrifying consolidation of power and wealth.

And this is I should also mention that Pepe fun who was friends with Jeffrey Epstein and was in his infamous Black Book.

Of Contacts, of course.

That they found as well. If you read Jeffrey Tubin's book on the subject, you would have found that in there. So yeah, you know, it's just a it's the whole thing is very and we haven't even started talking about the labor issues.

Yeah, so that's what I want to get to next, sugar, Yeah, I want to get to next that next. But and kind of in transition to that. There's one moment where someone asks if he Alphie I think it is that one of the other the other brother, billionaire brother, is asked if he'd ever cut sugarcane before, like the process that is required to make this product that he has built.

An empire on.

And he laughs and he says he lasted like ten minutes and it was so overwhelmingly difficult he had to like give up. So that's and it's not like the irony of that seems to be totally lost on him and everything involved in this system, or at least it's like buried under so many layers of wealth and influence that they don't have to acknowledge it. But yeah, let's take a break and we'll come back and we'll talk about labor.

And we are back, and yeah, I.

Mean there's so many scenes. The trip to the town that is like the sugar camp cane plantation town that is like just you know, covered in smoke and you know, just a matter. There's also like a scene I think it's in the eighties maybe nineties in Florida, like the Dog War where like workers strike and the police come in and start arresting everyone and seeking police dogs on them and like basically deport them at the point of

Within our lifetimes.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yes, the whole thing is just Even for me, and I've been a journalist for over twenty years, even for me, there were so many points in this where I was.

Like, are you are you kidding me? Honestly, it has put me off sugar. I can't not eat it is as I mentioned, that's really hard to do, but it has. It has put me off sugar.

Yeah. Yeah, it feels like again like just even the historical context of it, You're like, it's it started off as like a justification for the use of.

Slave labor and colonization.

Yeah, and now and like it's still in this like obscure place where like even right now I'm like looking up the fon Houl Brothers and the first thing will come up. It's like, hey, part of the like Florida, like agricultural Hall of Fame, and there's nothing like so these people are allowed to still live in this like very weird, like you know, semi obscurity while being you know, like at the wheel of one of the most fucked up industries in terms of like health outcomes and labor.

At the center of our podcast is this long year's long case that was on behalf of a large number of cane cutters. For a long time, American sugar producers used immigrants from H one n one workers from Jamaica. And part of the reason they admitted that they used workers from Jamaica was because a they couldn't get American workers to do the work for that low of pay. It was incredibly dangerous and hard work, and also American

Them send them back.

So after this this long case, they automated the fields. So even though the machines are not as th row, they don't get every single cane the way that the workers did. In the end, they found it to be more cost effective than using workers because machines don't file class action lawsuits against you, right exactly, They don't chop their fingers and limbs off. Although they never it's not like they got them real medical attention, right. So when we talk about slavery, a this is an industry that

Yeah, So in this case, early on there is this you know, for first of all, lawyers who are advocating on behalf of farm workers are treated just you know, it's very like at one point one of them, one of the lawyers who's advocating on behalf of labor, like gets a call from you know, somebody. Now I don't know that it was in the sugar industry, but they say, listen, I'm about to leave town and I want to kill you. I want you to drive down to my farm so

But then it as it gets to.

Higher courts through an appeals process. Yeah, through the appeals process, Like it really felt like the low level judge was able to see what was accurate, like see the truth because presumably like she wasn't the industry hadn't bothered to buy her offer or something like. Because it's like, as it gets higher and higher, like these judges just suddenly aren't making these kind of questionable, baffling decisions that really favor the sugar industry.

So a couple things. First of all, it was and I'm saying all this to the best of my ability, none of this is obviously proven. So for as far as I can tell, in my opinion, it looks as though, possibly intentionally, things were made as confusing as possible. When it came to recording hours and wages, we know for sure that the hours people worked were not always accurate.

Yeah, but they had this idealistic vision of themselves as like, you know, we came and built this thing from nothing principle. Yeah yeah, yeah, but it does, I don't know, it does feel like the low level, lower level judge was able to figure it out.

Yes, But you know, here's the thing. If you follow this whole and I don't want to give it away because frankly, it's a really compelling story this case as you follow it through. But in the end, the only defense they have is this centuries old like pre Civil War law, Right, that's the only way they end up being able to prevail. And when you finally realize this, when you get to the end, that that's how they are able to keep from paying these workers. Yeah, you know,

For what for what? Yeah, their margin a little bit, well.

You know, for the twenty three million. I mean, it wasn't even for the twenty three million dollar yacht sitting behind his house, because again, they spent more than that on their.

Attorneys, right, I mean you know that. I was just looking at the political donations of this family because I was just like, oh, let me, let me see, and like, oh, you guys are that big because you give it to everybody, everybody, you know, they're not just like we're we're into conservative politics.

See what now you see the purpose one of the purposes of the podcast, like this is the whole reason for this.

Yeah, so that people do know, yeah, what's.

Going on here?

Yeah, because I'm like, wow, you're giving to like doctor Oz, Joe Manchin any but Debbie Wasserman Schultz, like everybody that basically has any kind of saying I'm sure they. I'm sure there are people who run their pack or whatever their political spending or savvy enough to know where to send that money based on committee assignments and all that. But yeah, it's wow. Yeah, it's why not playing well?

Celeste, thank you so much for coming on talking about the show. The show is called Big Sugar and it drops this week, right it does. Yeah, So you can go find that wherever fine podcasts are published. Where can people find you, follow you, find out more about all this stuff.

So my website is just Celesteheadley dot com for the moment on Twitter all on that last, and that's almost the only social media besides Instagram where I put post post pictures of.

My dog and your dog? Is there sugar? Is there sugar in art pet food too?

Not the pet food I buy?

Okay, good to know, yes.

But you got to read the label. Read the label.

One question though, when they say added sugar, is that like another Is that another ploy of the industry or that's more just to say about the process, because other times you see like no added sugar aside from the stuff that's like naturally occurring.

And it's already in it. Yeah?

Yeah, Is that is that a way to be like adding it to that? Yeah? Yeah, sense it's all around cleus.

Does there a work of media that you've been enjoying.

A work of media? Actually, I just shared on on Twitter today. This really the short video from a kind named mic O Vaughn and you can find it. Actually I retweeted it, but he sent it out on on Instagram and it's he made it a satire video about a product called could You Fucking Not? And it's for people who men who have correct ale dysfunction and correct women who know more about a subject than they do. So it's pretty brilliant and I have probably watched it like ten times maybe.

Yeah, Miles, where can people find you?

What is the work at media you've been enjoying? Uh?

You can find me on Twitter, Instagram, other at based entities at Miles of Gray. Also, if you want to hear some basketball chatter, check out Jacket and Eyes basketball podcast. Miles and Jack Got Mad Mousies. You know, don't talking about the off season. There's still a lot to talk about, believe it or not, because there's so much happening. And I saw Victor webbin Yama get absolutely swarmed at the

A couple McDonald's based tweets. Will Send It tweeted losing my lust for life. Just ate a big Mac and didn't grin or chuckle at all. I only said who has it better than me? Two times? It's no idiot, Big Mac. And then hex and Kraft tweeted pronouncing Grimace like VERSACEI so Grimachi is a good, good way to put.

A little pizzazz. Yeah, exactly, like saying like asparta may That's right exactly.

You can find me on Twitter, Jack Underscore Obrian. You can find us on Twitter at daily Zeikeeist. We're at d daily Zeikeist on Instagram. We have Facebook fan page and a website, Daily zeikeist dot com. Worry post our episodes and our footnote. We link off the information that we talked about in today's episode, as well as a song that we think you might enjoy. Miles is their song you think people mightn't.

Yeah, I've stumbled upon a really cool I think quart Yeah it is. I like, I think they're a quartet. They're called Speaker's Corner Quartet. I'm like, I think, yeah, they're quartet from London. Really great musicians, Like if you like Hiatus, Coyote or bands with like high musician fluency kind of vibes, this is a This is a great band and this track is called Soapbox Soliloquy, really really great track. If you like live bands with that hip

For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you list your favorite shows. That's going to do it for us this morning. You're back this afternoon to tell you what is trending and we will talk to you all then.

Bye bye,