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Speaker 1: Minneapolis forty four busy sidewalks, miles of street car tracks,
Speaker 1: businessmen in gray suits and hats, shop girls in knee
Speaker 1: length skirts. The Mississippi snakes through the middle of the city.
Speaker 1: The Fauchet Tower looms overhead. Overseas, the war in Europe
Speaker 1: and the South Pacific still rages. So many of the
Speaker 1: younger men are gone, but there is bustle, an energy
Speaker 1: that makes the downtown feel like Chicago or New York.
Speaker 1: City unless you look closely and pay attention day after day,
Speaker 1: and if you did that, you would see a strange
Speaker 1: sight that set Minneapolis in that moment apart. You would
Speaker 1: see men in groups of two walk in the streets
Speaker 1: early twenties, dressed identically in khakis and white shirts. They
Speaker 1: would seem healthy at first, but then as the fall
Speaker 1: of nineteen forty four turns into the long winter and
Speaker 1: spring of nineteen forty five, you would see them start
Speaker 1: to change. You'd see them start to move slowly, as
Speaker 1: if they were old men. Their clothes are one, then two,
Speaker 1: then three sizes too big, eyes, hollowed out, hair, thinning,
Speaker 1: skin like parchment. They sit in restaurants and soda fountains
Speaker 1: and drink cup after cup of coffee, but never eat ever,
Speaker 1: even if you invited one of them to join your table,
Speaker 1: they just stare at your food with blank eyes, then
Speaker 1: move on, shuffling down the sidewalk across the Mississippi and
Speaker 1: back to a warren of rooms under the football stadium
Speaker 1: at the University of Minnesota, Back to the Department of
Speaker 1: Physiological Hygiene, run by a man named Ansel Keys. What
Speaker 1: does he look like, Ansel Keys? He was short, you know,
Speaker 1: I think that bothered him a little bit. He was
Speaker 1: very muscular, He was very, I think, very good looking
Speaker 1: in his youth. That's Sarah Tracy, a historian at the
Speaker 1: Versity of Oklahoma who's writing a biography of ansel Keys.
Speaker 1: Do you know he was a child genius. He was
Speaker 1: one of Lewis Terman's fifteen hundred gifted children whom he tracked.
Speaker 1: He was a termite. Yes, he was a termite. You
Speaker 1: know about the termite I do. I do. The termites
Speaker 1: were a group of children with super high IQs. You
Speaker 1: had to be very smart to be a termite. He
Speaker 1: was very self possessed as a child. You know, if
Speaker 1: he set his mind to doing something, he did it.
Speaker 1: He left high school three times. Wants to become a
Speaker 1: powder monkey and some mines gold mines. Wants to become
Speaker 1: a lumberjack, and wants to collect bat guano from caves
Speaker 1: in Arizona. Ansel Keys was America's first true celebrity doctor,
Speaker 1: a mountain climber, an adventurer. He was on the cover
Speaker 1: of Time back when that was the real measure of celebrity.
Speaker 1: He wrote best selling cookbooks with his wife. He had
Speaker 1: a fabulous villain in your naples. The Army has developed
Speaker 1: a now famous k Ration, the completely streamlined meal. Back
Speaker 1: before the Second World War, the Army came to him
Speaker 1: and asked him to make a high calorie preprepared meal.
Speaker 1: It was called the k Ration K for Keys, of course,
Speaker 1: and millions of gis ended up carrying his creation into battle.
Speaker 1: Originally designed for parrot rules, K proved ideal for tank busters,
Speaker 1: commandos and all isolated units. Each package contains a balanced
Speaker 1: by them and rich meal. With the k Ration under
Speaker 1: his belt and so, Keys then turned his attention to
Speaker 1: an even bigger question, one that had long obsessed those
Speaker 1: who study human physiology. What happens to people when, for
Speaker 1: months on end, you deny them food. My name is
Speaker 1: Malcolm Gladwell. You're listening to Revisionist History, my podcast about
Speaker 1: Things Overlooked and miss a Understood. This episode is about
Speaker 1: an audacious experiment conducted at the end of the Second
Speaker 1: World War by one of the most remarkable figures in
Speaker 1: twentieth century, signs Ansel Keys. So, for purposes at the tape,
Speaker 1: if you could just state your name and the location
Speaker 1: and date of your birth. This is Earl Heckman living
Speaker 1: at eight eight eight had a line drive in elves
Speaker 1: in Illinois, and I was born on December one, nineteen eighteen.
Speaker 1: The best record we have of what exactly happened in
Speaker 1: Ansel Keys's laboratory is in a box of taped interviews
Speaker 1: stored away in the archives of the Library of Congress.
Speaker 1: Each tape runs roughly two hours in length. They contain
Speaker 1: the recollections of eighteen of Ansel Keys's subjects, who sat
Speaker 1: down in their eighties to leave a perminent record of
Speaker 1: their experience. My name is Sam Legg. I was born
Speaker 1: in Hackensack, New Jersey, on November tenth, nineteen sixteen. Max
Speaker 1: Campbell meant that with an M in the middle initial
Speaker 1: and November seventh, nineteen twenty. The interviews were conducted by
Speaker 1: two researchers from Johns Hopkins University, Richard Semba and Leah Calm.
Speaker 1: The tapes were given to the library shortly thereafter, where
Speaker 1: they have sat on a shelf ever since, untouched, a
Speaker 1: forgotten record of eighteen voices talking about an experience none
Speaker 1: of them will ever forget. It was known as the
Speaker 1: Minnesota Starvation Experiment. We were in Stadium South Tower, the
Speaker 1: football stadium underneath the stadium had quite a complex of
Speaker 1: four research there, and we had there was a We
Speaker 1: lived in a dormitory there. All the activities at the
Speaker 1: diversity were open to us. During their off hours, the
Speaker 1: men would roam the city. People living near the university
Speaker 1: saw them all the time, young men in white shirts
Speaker 1: and khaki pants, taking long walks along the Mississippi, sitting
Speaker 1: in restaurants, drinking coffee, but never eating a thing. The
Speaker 1: men called themselves the guinea pigs. We were all in
Speaker 1: excellent physical health, and as far as as far as
Speaker 1: they knew, we were all in good metal health at
Speaker 1: the time. We did not stay that way in during
Speaker 1: the experiment, but we were. You can go to the
Speaker 1: Library of Congress and listen to the tapes in the
Speaker 1: reading room yourself, if you like. You might end up
Speaker 1: wondering what was ansel Keys trying to accomplish by putting
Speaker 1: his subjects through so much? And was it worth it?
Speaker 1: When I hear somebody say, oh, I'm simply starved, I
Speaker 1: know they don't know what they're saying, because there's a
Speaker 1: real difference between what's your body craves for from the
Speaker 1: jurisulves starvation, then what you normally feel as hunger. The
Speaker 1: second episode of this season of Provision's history was devoted
Speaker 1: in large part to the story of the famous iodine
Speaker 1: experiments in Akron, Ohio. During the First World War. A
Speaker 1: doctor named David Marine was trying to figure out how
Speaker 1: to treat goiter, a condition that causes severe enlargement of
Speaker 1: the thyroid gland. Goiter was widespread in the early part
Speaker 1: of the twentieth century. Millions of people walked around with
Speaker 1: baseball sized bulges on their necks. Marine wanted to see
Speaker 1: if regular doses of iodine could solve the problem, so
Speaker 1: he convinced the Akrone school board to let him run
Speaker 1: a study on thousands of schoolgirls feeding them regular doses
Speaker 1: of iodine to see if it prevented goiter. Could that experiment,
Speaker 1: I wondered, be conducted today. I called up the bioethicist
Speaker 1: Art Kaplan, who teaches at New York University today. To
Speaker 1: attempt this experiment to prevent goiter would be a usually
Speaker 1: different experience for that researcher and for the subjects, the
Speaker 1: school board and their families. For one thing, when that
Speaker 1: experiment was done, there were no federal regulations. There was
Speaker 1: no federal oversight of what was going on. These days,
Speaker 1: most experiments involving human subjects are closely regulated. They involve
Speaker 1: consent forms, disclosure statements, the right to drop out of
Speaker 1: a study at any given time. Kaplan's point was that,
Speaker 1: compared to today, medical research in the past starts to
Speaker 1: look like the Wild West. If you could find the
Speaker 1: money and talk people into participating, off you went. In
Speaker 1: Alabama between the nineteen thirties and the nineteen seventies, the
Speaker 1: Public Health Service launched the Tuskegee Siphlist, where a group
Speaker 1: of African American men were tricked into signing up for
Speaker 1: what they thought was medical treatment, when in fact all
Speaker 1: the researchers wanted to do was to find out what
Speaker 1: happened when you let untreated syphilis run its course. It
Speaker 1: was maybe the lowest moment in twentieth century American medicine.
Speaker 1: In the early nineteen sixties, the Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram
Speaker 1: ran his infamous Obedient Study two eighty five volts, where
Speaker 1: a Milgram deceived otherwise unsuspecting subjects into thinking that they
Speaker 1: were delivering high voltage electric shocks to someone they'd never met.
Speaker 1: I absolutely refers to answer anymore cut the out of me.
Speaker 1: You can't all read cut the ouse, keep me out
Speaker 1: at the next words green place. In today's era, the
Speaker 1: number one consideration in any proposed experiment is its effect
Speaker 1: on a subject. Back then, the number one consideration was
Speaker 1: the value of what you could learn from the subject.
Speaker 1: The subject was thought of like a soldier in back,
Speaker 1: someone whose well being was secondary to the larger cause.
Speaker 1: The answer to the vitamin question is not pilled but
Speaker 1: good food in plenty of variety. According to doctor Keys,
Speaker 1: the vitamins were missing from his food. A soldier might
Speaker 1: have to take concentrated vitamins. If he had vitamins but
Speaker 1: no food, he was still starved. The first way, naturally,
Speaker 1: is the supply vitamins in the food. Now, remember the
Speaker 1: stature of Ansal Keys has attained during the Second World War.
Speaker 1: He's the world's greatest nutrition researcher. He's closely involved with
Speaker 1: the war effort. He just developed the k ration to
Speaker 1: great acclaim, and he looks around the world and he
Speaker 1: sees millions of people suffering from severe malnutrition. The war
Speaker 1: disrupted the food supply of entire continents. Millions of people
Speaker 1: were in concentration camps, reduced to skeletons ansal. Keys knew
Speaker 1: how little his field understood about prolonged malnutrition. What was
Speaker 1: the effect of long term hunger on physical well being,
Speaker 1: unpsychological health, and what was the best way to bring
Speaker 1: the undernourished back to health? What was more important how
Speaker 1: much you've fed someone or what you've fed someone. So
Speaker 1: Keys designs an experiment. He would need thirty six subjects
Speaker 1: for at least a year. The first three months would
Speaker 1: be the control period. Each research subject would be stabilized
Speaker 1: at what Keys estimated to be their correct weight, three
Speaker 1: full meals a day intake matching outtake. Then after stabilization
Speaker 1: would come six months of severe calorie restriction, with the
Speaker 1: goal that each man losed twenty five percent of his
Speaker 1: ideal weight. Exercise would be mandatory throughout the study, twenty
Speaker 1: two miles a week of walking up and down the
Speaker 1: Mississippi or through downtown Minneapolis, all through the long Minnesota
Speaker 1: winter and through the following summer. Each participant tested on
Speaker 1: a regular basis blood samples, sperm samples, body fat, blood volumes.
Speaker 1: The men would be asked to keep journals and record
Speaker 1: their thoughts and dreams, and then after six months of
Speaker 1: starvation three months of recovery. The crucial part. Keys plan
Speaker 1: to test out different rehabilitation diets with varying amounts of calories, protein,
Speaker 1: and vitamins. The experiment begins on November nineteenth, nineteen forty four.
Speaker 1: Keys gathers his guinea pigs at the Laboratory of Physiological
Speaker 1: Hygiene underneath the football stadium. He stands in front of
Speaker 1: all thirty six and gives them a speech. He had
Speaker 1: stayed up the previous night practicing in front of his wife. Quote.
Speaker 1: We are here because of the problem of relief feeding
Speaker 1: in general, and particularly in the war devastated areas today.
Speaker 1: You can imagine a moment Keys, the brilliant sign, bringing
Speaker 1: the group of young men before him under his spell.
Speaker 1: Human misery and want are qualities of life which properly
Speaker 1: bring an emotional response, but starvation is quantitative and must
Speaker 1: be met with quantitative answers. Grand words tailor made for
Speaker 1: men of idealism, eager for a chance to serve their country.
Speaker 1: And then are you ready to begin? And a deafening
Speaker 1: cheer goes up, Woman, start this experiment. We were all
Speaker 1: given the same amount of proof. Right listening to the
Speaker 1: oral histories from the veterans of the Minnesota starvation experiment
Speaker 1: is a strange experience. We had six slices of bread,
Speaker 1: thirty take away two slices and four slices six slices,
Speaker 1: and we still didn't lose weight. Then they started taking
Speaker 1: away your potato. The men are all at the end
Speaker 1: of their lives. Nearly sixty years have passed since the
Speaker 1: experiment ended. But rarely do any of them say I
Speaker 1: don't remember or I don't know. They know, and they remember,
Speaker 1: and their memories are precise. In fact, it seems like
Speaker 1: they've been reliving the long year between the fall of
Speaker 1: nineteen forty four and the fall of nineteen forty five
Speaker 1: ever since. Do you remember what your lowest weight got
Speaker 1: down to? A hundred and thirty four? I believe what
Speaker 1: was sort of your standard weight entering. I went in
Speaker 1: at two twenty and they they standardized me down to
Speaker 1: one before the real experiment began, so I got down
Speaker 1: to one thirty four. The thirty six subjects started the
Speaker 1: experiment with high hopes. Keys had arranged for them to
Speaker 1: take classes at the university. The men themselves organized dramatic
Speaker 1: productions and planned to hold educational seminars many wanted to
Speaker 1: prepare themselves for relief work after the war was over.
Speaker 1: In the recruitment leaflet Keys sent out, he mentioned the
Speaker 1: intriguing possibilities in the fact that there was in all
Speaker 1: women's dormitory nearby for those, as he put it, who
Speaker 1: wanted to be a guinea pig by day and a
Speaker 1: wolf by night. What happened after once the semi servation started,
Speaker 1: things went downhill very fast. Were not real fast. It
Speaker 1: didn't seem much change at first, But when we got
Speaker 1: down to the to the place where we really knew
Speaker 1: what the word hunger meant. Instead of just saying I'm hungry,
Speaker 1: let's go eat, which isn't the word hunger, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's a different different When we really felt pains of
Speaker 1: hunger and we began thinking about food most of the time,
Speaker 1: and so forth, we began to be more and more irritable.
Speaker 1: After the three months of initial rigor, while they stabilize
Speaker 1: their weight, the severe calorie restrictions kicked in. Everyone now
Speaker 1: got just two meals a day cabbage, potatoes, bread slices,
Speaker 1: Ruda vegas, and occasional treats of macaroni and cheese. I
Speaker 1: was one of the few, now I shouldn't say a few.
Speaker 1: I was one of the many that metally was transfixed
Speaker 1: on cookbooks, and I collected probably one hundred cooks books.
Speaker 1: I would read cookbooks like you would read readers digest.
Speaker 1: Some of the men would walk into Minneapolis, sit in
Speaker 1: restaurants and watch other people eat the way they might
Speaker 1: have once gone to a concert or watched the play.
Speaker 1: They dreamt about food, They argued about food. At meal times,
Speaker 1: they fixated on their plates. I mean we would lick
Speaker 1: the plates, and I remember I heard that caused a
Speaker 1: bit of That caused a bit of tention. I think
Speaker 1: it did, particularly evening, for instance, one of the first
Speaker 1: that I saw doing that, and I thought, that's disgusting.
Speaker 1: I'm pretty scold. I would doing it myself, so oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I just thought, this is that you would
Speaker 1: actually degrade yourself to the extended licking a plate. Give
Speaker 1: me a break, And that pretty soon we were all
Speaker 1: looking it. Coffee was one of the few indulgences they
Speaker 1: were allowed, so they drank it to except twelve eighteen
Speaker 1: cups a day. They chewed enormous amounts of bubble gum.
Speaker 1: They began souping their meals their word for adding water
Speaker 1: to everything they were given to create the sense that
Speaker 1: their portions were bigger. One of the men took a
Speaker 1: date to see to Have and Have Not, starring Humphrey
Speaker 1: Bogart and Lauren Bacall. I'm sorry, Slim, but I still
Speaker 1: say you're awful good And I wouldn't oh, I forgot.
Speaker 1: You wouldn't take anything from anybody, would you. That's right?
Speaker 1: One of the great romantic dramas of the Warriors. But
Speaker 1: he couldn't concentrate except for the part where Bogart goes
Speaker 1: to a restaurant. And if you went to a movie,
Speaker 1: you weren't particularly interested in a lot of scenes, but
Speaker 1: you noticed every time they ate and what they ate.
Speaker 1: During the long starvation phase, Keys began to lose some
Speaker 1: of his subjects. One of them went walking through down
Speaker 1: to Minneapolis, and suddenly his resolve broke. He'd been having
Speaker 1: dreams of cannibalism. He went into seventeen different soda fountains
Speaker 1: and gulp down a milkshake at each one. After that,
Speaker 1: we could not go out without a buddy, And if
Speaker 1: we had a girlfriend, we could bring the girlfriend and
Speaker 1: the doctors would interview the girl and goal care, so
Speaker 1: when we went on a date, she'd be your buddy. Finally,
Speaker 1: after six months of starvation recovery, on the final day,
Speaker 1: when you were able to finally break what do you
Speaker 1: remember what you did? Yes, they did a big breakfast
Speaker 1: for us, and that most of us stuffed ourselves. And
Speaker 1: then I think I went downtown in one restaurant, and
Speaker 1: when the d a another meal, and then it got
Speaker 1: out and went and another one, and and just I mean,
Speaker 1: one couldn't satisfy your craving for food by filling up
Speaker 1: your stomach. Many of us, I think didn't unreasonable things.
Speaker 1: I was invited out for I think a Swiss stake dinner,
Speaker 1: and though I was filled to the brim, I went
Speaker 1: and stuffed a little bit more on in on top,
Speaker 1: and then got on a bus writing back to the
Speaker 1: to the stadium and jostling up and down on all
Speaker 1: of a sudden I lost it all. Now I got
Speaker 1: off at the next time, so I felt sorry for
Speaker 1: the guy that was going to have to clean it up.
Speaker 1: But then I didn't stay around. In nineteen fifty five,
Speaker 1: years after the study ended, Keys published The Biology of
Speaker 1: Human Starvation, his landmark two volume account of what was
Speaker 1: learned during the study. To this day, that book helps
Speaker 1: doctors understand everything from them in relief to eating disorders.
Speaker 1: If you've ever used the terms metabolism, intermittent fasting, calories in,
Speaker 1: and calories out, then you're talking about concepts that go
Speaker 1: back to the Keys experiment. Ancial Keys did exactly what
Speaker 1: he set out to do, but his subjects they were
Speaker 1: soldiers in a battle whose well being was secondary to
Speaker 1: the larger cause. Years later, the subjects of the starvation
Speaker 1: experiment gathered for a reunion ancal Keys. By then an
Speaker 1: old man addressed the group. Someone asked him, did he
Speaker 1: think the benefits of what was learned were greater than
Speaker 1: the costs of what the men went through. He looked
Speaker 1: out at all the men in front of him and said, well,
Speaker 1: you're all here, aren't you. Out Of all the interviews
Speaker 1: in the box of tapes at the Library of Congress,
Speaker 1: one stands out the testimony of a man named Sam Legg.
Speaker 1: His father was a stockbroker in New York City. Sam
Speaker 1: went to the elite Saint Paul's private school in New
Speaker 1: Hampshire and then on to Yale. Sam Legg with someone
Speaker 1: the other guinea pigs looked up to, that is, until
Speaker 1: his behavior took a sharp turn during the six month
Speaker 1: starvation period. His mooths began to swing back and forth.
Speaker 1: Like many others, he got obsessed with cookbooks, but his
Speaker 1: obsession was pronounced. He took to eating in the corner
Speaker 1: by himself. The historian Todd Tucker interviewed Leg for his
Speaker 1: book The Great Starvation Experiment. He writes about the way
Speaker 1: Leg started to eat. He combined all the food on
Speaker 1: his tray into one pile. He then took his fork
Speaker 1: and stirred it and mashed it all together, the thimblefuls
Speaker 1: of fish, chowder, spaghetti, peas, and potatoes, until it was
Speaker 1: a homogeneous, dark gray greenish page on his plate. He
Speaker 1: then salted and peppered the amalgamation until it was crusted
Speaker 1: with seasoning. When he had scraped every morsel off his plate,
Speaker 1: he then picked it up and licked it noisily until
Speaker 1: not a molecule of food remained. The slurping noise was
Speaker 1: so loud it made the other men WinCE. In his
Speaker 1: oral history interview, Leg talks about it how during the
Speaker 1: starvation phase he felt his character start to slip away.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you what a nasty moment. I was walking
Speaker 1: along and I obviously had a buddy, but I don't
Speaker 1: know who it was, and it was deep into the
Speaker 1: semi starvation, and we were tired. When they crossed the street,
Speaker 1: they didn't have the energy to take the half step
Speaker 1: up onto the sidewalk. We were tired and weak, and
Speaker 1: so we were standing at a corner waiting for a
Speaker 1: light or something, and a kid came along on a
Speaker 1: bicycle and he was really moving, pumping away and going.
Speaker 1: I said, I wonder where he's going, And then I
Speaker 1: said ted to myself, I know where he's going. He's
Speaker 1: going home for supper, and I'm not. And then, for
Speaker 1: a very brief I hope it was brief moment, I
Speaker 1: suddenly hated that that boy, and that I hate at
Speaker 1: this point to tell you this because it doesn't speak
Speaker 1: very well for me, but I have remembered it with
Speaker 1: our guests horror that I could feel such a thing,
Speaker 1: so utterly irrational, But there was, and you ask an
Speaker 1: experience that I remember. I sure remember that the interview
Speaker 1: is almost over. Just one final question. Anything that we
Speaker 1: haven't talked about, or that I should have asked you,
Speaker 1: or you'd like to add that seems to Elivan, you
Speaker 1: should have asked me why I'm missing fingers on my
Speaker 1: left hand. Okay. I keep saying to myself that this
Speaker 1: was because I was so weak and I was chopping wood,
Speaker 1: and I got the act caught up in a tree,
Speaker 1: and I didn't have an rapid enough reaction time to
Speaker 1: pull my hand away, so I removed some fingers. He
Speaker 1: was at the house of two elderly ladies in Minneapolis
Speaker 1: who had befriended some of the subjects. Leg and his buddy,
Speaker 1: We're going watch the women eat, then go outside to
Speaker 1: split wood to steal them. Elves against the temptation to
Speaker 1: take any of the women's food. I recognize that a
Speaker 1: human being can go through a period of mental illness.
Speaker 1: I think I was mentally ill. Was I mentally ill
Speaker 1: at the time that I removed the fingers, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I like to think that I wasn't. I like to
Speaker 1: think it was an accident. I'm not gonna sit here
Speaker 1: and categorically say that I didn't do it on purpose.
Speaker 1: Leg was rushed to the hospital. Pencil Keys heard the
Speaker 1: news and came straight to his bedside. Leg looked like
Speaker 1: a concentration camp survivor. His eyes had changed color, a
Speaker 1: strange side effect of deprivation that was common among the men.
Speaker 1: His corneas were a hard, brilliant white, the color of
Speaker 1: gleaming teeth. His skin was like flaky tree bark. His
Speaker 1: hand was a bloody mess. I'm quoting now from Tucker's account.
Speaker 1: Is there any thing I can do for you, Sam
Speaker 1: asked doctor Keys. Yes, said Sam. Keys leaned closer to here.
Speaker 1: Keep me in the experiment, he said, Sam. I'm afraid
Speaker 1: I can't keep you in, said Keys. You need rest
Speaker 1: and decent meals. The two of them went back and forth,
Speaker 1: and Leg said Doctor. He said, his voice still hoarse
Speaker 1: and quiet. For the rest of my life, people are
Speaker 1: going to ask me what I did during the war.
Speaker 1: This experiment is my chance to give an honorable answer
Speaker 1: to that question. Quote. And so for the next five days,
Speaker 1: until Leg was released from the hospital, they brought him
Speaker 1: his meals from the laboratory kitchen in a cardboard take
Speaker 1: up box, because of course, he couldn't eat the hospital food.
Speaker 1: That would be cheating. Could answer, Keys do that experiment today?
Speaker 1: I asked the ethosicist Art Captain about Keys's experiment. Kaplan
Speaker 1: knew the story well. He taught for years at the
Speaker 1: University of Minnesota, Putting people on starvation diets, having them
Speaker 1: run around a city Minneapolis, being confronted with food everywhere,
Speaker 1: having them stressed out. Not a chance. The Minnesota Starvation Experiment,
Speaker 1: or any experiment like it, could never be repeated today.
Speaker 1: In the next episode of Revisionist History, we ask, are
Speaker 1: we sure that's a good thing? Revisionist History is produced
Speaker 1: by Eloise Linton Leaving Gustu and Jacob Smith, with Tali
Speaker 1: Emlyn and Harrison VJ. Choi. Our editor is Julia Barton.
Speaker 1: Our executive producer is Mila Bell. Original scoring by Luis Gara,
Speaker 1: mastering by Flawn Williams, and engineering by Nina Lawrence. Beth
Speaker 1: Johnson is our fact checker. Special thanks to Todd Tucker
Speaker 1: go read his book The Great Starvation Experiment, Ansel Keys
Speaker 1: and The Men Who Starve for Science Special. Thanks also
Speaker 1: to Ariella Markowitz for production help on this episode. I'm
Speaker 1: Malcolm Glaube. Much of all, if you target towns and cities,
Speaker 1: it's as clear as day that there will be civilian victims.
Speaker 1: And then Jet five, the US firebomb Tokyo, destroying a
Speaker 1: quarter of the city and killing more than a hundred
Speaker 1: thousand people. I wrote about this infamous bombing campaign in
Speaker 1: my audiobook The Bomber Mafia, and one of the survivor's
Speaker 1: voices we Hear is from a project called Paper City.
Speaker 1: Paper City is now out as a groundbreaking feature documentary
Speaker 1: director Adrian Francis explores what we choose to remember and
Speaker 1: hope to forget. To find out more, visit paper City
Speaker 1: film dot com and follow at paper City Tokyo on
Speaker 1: social media.