This Podcast Will Kill You

Ep 191 Famine: More than starvation

October 21, 2025

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  • Famine is far more complex than mass starvation, involving social disruption, epidemics, and often being intentionally caused or perpetuated by political decisions rather than solely natural events. 
  • The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) system provides a technical, politically agnostic standard for declaring famine based on extreme thresholds of malnutrition and mortality, which is crucial for triggering aid but difficult to apply retrospectively to historical famines. 
  • Historically, famine has shifted from being driven by environmental factors and colonialism to being predominantly man-made through totalitarian policies or conflict, and while catastrophic famines have declined in magnitude since the 1980s, political apathy and conflict are causing a resurgence of severe food insecurity today, exemplified by the current situations in Sudan and Gaza. 

Segments

Famine Excerpt and Introduction
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(00:00:01)
  • Key Takeaway: Famine is a deliberate condition, not merely a threat, forcing academics in Gaza to resist erasure by continuing their work despite starvation.
  • Summary: The episode opens with a powerful excerpt from an academic in Gaza describing starvation as a deliberate condition, not a threat, where the urgency to bear witness outweighs physical needs. This segment introduces the episode’s focus on famine, distinguishing it from simple starvation on a population scale. The hosts, Erin Welsh and Erin Alman Updike, welcome listeners to the second part of their series on starvation and famine.
Defining Famine and IPC System
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(00:07:45)
  • Key Takeaway: Famine classification requires meeting specific, extreme thresholds under the IPC system, including 20% of households facing complete lack of food and death rates exceeding two per 10,000 per day above baseline.
  • Summary: The discussion emphasizes that famine is more complex than just a food shortage, involving widespread social disruption. The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) system defines Phase 5 (famine) by criteria such as extreme critical levels of acute malnutrition and excess mortality, which includes deaths from all causes above the baseline. This technical definition is crucial for activating humanitarian aid protocols.
Historical Famine Measurement
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(00:18:22)
  • Key Takeaway: Historical famines are characterized by magnitude scales, where a ‘great famine’ killed at least 100,000 people and a ‘catastrophic famine’ killed over 1 million.
  • Summary: Because historical famines often lack the demographic data needed for IPC’s excess mortality calculation, the Howe and Devereaux magnitude scale is used for characterization. Between 1870 and 2010, over 50 great and catastrophic famines resulted in 116 million deaths, though the vast majority occurred before 1980.
Causes: Man-Made Disasters
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(00:21:31)
  • Key Takeaway: Modern famine is exclusively man-made, driven by political decisions, malice, or mismanagement, directly refuting Malthusian theories that population growth is the inevitable cause.
  • Summary: Famine is rarely caused solely by natural events like drought; it is often wielded as a weapon of conquest, submission, or genocide by governments. The concept that food shortage is the sole limiting factor, as claimed by Malthus, is false, as food access and political prevention of access are the primary modern drivers.
Famine Consequences and Trauma
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(00:29:34)
  • Key Takeaway: Famine amplifies dangers like infectious disease exponentially, disproportionately killing the youngest and oldest, and inflicts trauma that spans generations.
  • Summary: In famine conditions, weakened immune systems combined with lack of sanitation and clean water turn common diseases like typhus into mass killers, often causing more deaths than outright starvation. Famine strikes the politically excluded, and the resulting trauma, including cognitive impairment, can affect subsequent generations, as seen in survivors of the Holodomor.
Famine Trends and Decline
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(00:36:45)
  • Key Takeaway: The magnitude of famine deaths has sharply declined since the 1980s due to public health advances, humanitarian aid, and functioning markets, though this decline is geographically uneven.
  • Summary: The shift from colonial-era famines to those driven by totalitarian regimes and then to conflicts in sub-Saharan Africa marks a change in patterns. While global averages show fewer deaths due to improved agriculture and trade, the rise of nationalism and political apathy threatens this progress, as predicted by Alex DeWaal in 2017.
Current Famine Crises Update
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(00:51:48)
  • Key Takeaway: As of September 2025, Sudan and Gaza are the two regions meeting the IPC threshold for famine, with Gaza’s crisis intensified by the prior decade-long blockade and the destruction of its food system.
  • Summary: Over 300 million people face acute food insecurity globally, largely due to conflict, with Sudan and Gaza currently classified as famine zones (IPC Phase 5). In Gaza, the collapse of the food system, lack of domestic production, and violence at aid distribution sites have led to hundreds of documented starvation deaths, alongside severe risks of refeeding syndrome due to prolonged malnutrition.