Timesuck with Dan Cummins - 232 - The Great Emu War

Episode Date: February 22, 2021

The Great Emu War! Such a weird and fun tale to tell. What an odd historical period. As World War I came to an end, Australia - whose economy was tanking, tried to figure out what to do with their returning veterans. They decided to give many of them parcels of land in Western Australia where they could grow wheat. And then the Great Depression hit. It hit countries all over the world, and few harder than Australia, and it hit few Australians harder than many of those veteran farmers. They now struggled to sell their wheat. And then, the emus started showing up and eating what little wheat they had left! Lots of emus. Around 20,000 of them. Australia’s national bird became a national pest, and desperate farmers reached out to the Australian government for help. They reached out to the Ministry of War. And the government sent them three soldiers, armed with two machine guns and a film crew. Probably should’ve sent in a lot more troops and a lot more guns - the emus were a much more formidable foe than anticipated. We return to the land down under today to suck Australia’s Great Emu War - on this bird-brained, machine gun, invasive creature edition, of Timesuck.Thanks for helping Bad Magic Productions give $12,200 this month to No Kid Hungry https://www.nokidhungry.org/ Click the link to learn more. Watch the Suck on YouTube: https://youtu.be/0xFoD4MAMsY Merch - https://badmagicmerch.com/ Discord! https://discord.gg/tqzH89v Want to join the Cult of the Curious private Facebook Group? Go directly to Facebook and search for "Cult of the Curious" in order to locate whatever current page hasn't been put in FB Jail :) For all merch related questions/problems: [e-mail] (copy and paste) Please rate and subscribe on iTunes and elsewhere and follow the suck on social media!! @timesuckpodcast on IG and http://www.facebook.com/timesuckpodcast Wanna become a Space Lizard? We're over 10,000 strong! Click here: https://www.patreon.com/timesuckpodcast Sign up through Patreon and for $5 a month you get to listen to the Secret Suck, which will drop Thursdays at Noon, PST. You'll also get 20% off of all regular Timesuck merch PLUS access to exclusive Space Lizard merch. You get to vote on two Monday topics each month via the app. And you get the download link for my new comedy album, Feel the Heat. Check the Patreon posts to find out how to download the new album and take advantage of other benefits.

The Great Emu War. Not Emu War. Emu War. I hear you, Aussie suckers. As World War I came to an end, Australia, whose economy was tanking, tried to figure out what to do with their returning veterans. They decided to give many of them parcels of land in Western Australia, where they could grow wheat, and then the Great Depression hit.

It hit countries all over the world and few harder than Australia, and it hit few Australians harder than many of those veteran farmers. They now struggled to sell their wheat. And then to make things even worse, emus started showing up. Lots of them. Around 20,000. And they were real hungry. And they figured out that wheat is pretty tasty. No gluten-free diet for them. They wanted all the gluten. These new farmers were now being financially terrorized by a massive mob of emus. And yes, a mob is the technical term for a group of emus. These large, flightless, strange-looking, bumbling dinosaur birds tore through fences,

ate crops, sometimes even attacked farmers, especially if they spotted a shiny object on them like a coin or a belt buckle. Australia's national bird became a national pest. The emu infestation got so bad that these desperate farmers reached out to the Australian government for help. In their quest for solutions, they skipped over the agricultural or ecology folks, even the animal management folks, and went straight to the Ministry of War.

The government would soon send three soldiers armed with two machine guns and a film crew. Probably should have sent in a lot more troops and a lot more guns. A war was waged. Man versus beast. Pretty one-sided war since the beast didn't have guns, but a war nonetheless. And it appears as if the emus may have won. How is that possible? We return to the land down under today to suck Australia's great emu war on this bird-brained, machine-gun, invasive creature edition of TimeSuck. This is Michael McDonald, and you're listening to TimeSuck. You're listening to TimeSuck.

Happy, happy, happy Monday, everyone. Hail Nimrod. Hail Lucifina. Praise Bojangles. Glory B to Triple M. I'm Dan Cummins, the Suckmaster. Just one nickname today. Just feeling one nickname.

And you are listening to Time Suck. Quick reminder that the Bad Magic Productions charity of the month this month was NoKidHungry.org. Thank you again to the Space Lizards who helped donate $12,200 to this organization. To find out more, to donate more than you have already, if you'd like to, or if you haven't donated, if you want to, go to NoKidHungry.org. Link in the episode description. In the store, we got another hell yearbook tee at BadMagicMerch.com. The truck stop killer, Robert Ben Rhodes, voted most likely to forget the safe word. In the store, we got another hell yearbook tee at badmagicmerch.com. The truck stop killer, Robert Ben Rhodes, voted most likely to forget the safe word.

You cannot attain sexual ascension without a slave. Incubus commands you to wear it over some nipple rings connected to a car battery. You remember that guy. Also, great comic and friend of mine, the fantastic Kelsey Cook, has a new stand-up special coming out. Kelsey Cook's Epix special airs on Friday, February 26th. It'll air Friday night again, February 26th, either midnight or 1230 a.m. Eastern Time. 30-minute special, part of Epix's series called Unprotected Sets. Very clever.

It can fluctuate each week as far as the time, the air date, or the air time, excuse me. So, you know, we won't know for sure until after this episode airs, if it's midnight or 1230. You know, you know how Google works. You can figure it out. So I hope you get lots of new laughs with Kelsey Cook's new special, her new Epics Unprotected set special. Big fan.

And now on to the Great Emu War. Some people call it the Great Emu War because there were a couple, or excuse me, Great Emu Wars, because there were a couple distinct phases of it. With the first assignment, second, after they'd reevaluated the methods of the first, in a way, the Emu War slash, you know, wars would continue to the 50s with farmers continually asking for assistance, though they didn't get as much as they wanted. In the end, it would be the advent of better and cheaper fences. It would finally put an end to the biggest hostilities

between humans and emus. Today's suck is fucking ridiculous on so many levels. Perhaps this nice little palate cleanser after last week's trip through Dante's nightmarish version of the Christian hell, which of course came after an actual hell on earth in the Armenian genocide the week before. Let's get into some silly. Australia, the land down under, as popularized by men at work, ambassadors of Australian culture, as we all know. No, but seriously, thank you, Colin Hay, great Aussie band. If you haven't heard Colin's acoustic version of Overkill, oh man, are you even alive? The land down under is where we'll be spending

the majority of our time today, covering this delightfully odd little slice of history. Although I haven't been, I've heard from many, it's a very good land. In the 2020 US News and World Report, countries with the highest quality of life rankings, Australia placed fifth out of 73 nations ranked. The quality of life sub-ranking based on an equally weighted average of scores from nine country attributes that relate to quality of life in a country,

affordability, good job market, economically stable, family friendly, income equality, how many people are down to fuck, how politically stable it is, how safe, how well developed is the public education system, how much ice cream is both tasty and affordable in the right temperature, how well developed is the public health system. I may have added the down to fuck part in the ice cream, but the rest included, and those other two probably should be included.

More ice cream, more sex, certainly leads to more happiness, does it not? Hail Lucifina. Quality of life sub-ranking score had a 17% weight in the overall best countries ranking where Australia also took fifth place. Our neighbor to the north, sweet Canada, took number one in quality of life. Number one, 2020. Other top five were Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Switzerland was ranked best overall nation.

USA, 15th in quality of life, seventh best nation overall. And I say all this to point out that Australia is one of the most successful nations in the world currently. Wealthy, healthy, modern, one of the most desirable places on earth to put down some meat sack roots, which is all the more impressive

when you take into account how the majority of the country slash continent is a barren, unforgiving, snake-filled nightmare slash shithole. The coasts are incredible from what I gather, but the giant majority of land in the middle, not so much, not for me, not for many actually. The outback seems to be a crazy place. It's as massive as it is horrible for human habitation. And it covers more than 70% of the continent slash country. And less than 5% of Australia's population lives there. And almost

all of them live in the Outback's coastal areas. Over 1.8 million square miles of the Outback are desert and very few people live there. Temperatures in the Outback's deserts can reach over 120 degrees Fahrenheit. It's a wild land, one of the least inhabited places on earth, full of extreme weather, extreme wildlife, plenty of bugs and critters, critters like emus. The great emu war took place on the edge of this desert. Really looking forward to exploring this strange war today.

Such a unique piece of history. And looking forward to exploring a strange and fascinating continent as well. Australia has always seemed to, like to be a magical place to me. I really, really hope I make it there for a vacation or for shows, you know, someday, who knows, the next few years. Australia's biggest city is Sydney, followed by Melbourne, Brisbane.

Since over 85% of the population lives in cities, Australia is actually among the countries with the highest degree of urbanization in the world, which I kind of found surprising. Here in the States, I feel like Australia is definitely mostly known for its outdoors, has a reputation for being unsettled, being home to a massive number of species of every kind of animal out there that can, you know, fuck you up. A land full of plenty of bugs, snakes, crocodiles, other beasts that can and will kill. But is it really that dangerous?

Maybe not as dangerous as it's been portrayed in a lot of films and TV shows. Much of the continent is pretty rugged though. Small portion of Australians actually living in or near the outback away from urban areas. The overwhelming majority of the nation's geography do face unique challenges due to their geographic isolation.

They often have poor health and welfare outcomes and their urban counterparts. While it seems most people picture the entire Outback being arid and desert-like, the Outback region extends from northern to southern. The coastlines actually encompasses various types of biomes, including tropical and monsoonal climates in northern areas, arid areas, and semi-arid areas. And people who live in the outback, desert and non-desert, do continually deal with wildlife,

including feral, but usually domesticated animals like camels that thrive in central Australia. I didn't know camels were in Australia for some reason. Wild horses known as brumbies, feral pigs, foxes, cats, so many fucking cats. So many rabbits. so many rabbits,

and more. And many of these animals, like emus, have left destructive marks on the environment, and a lot of time and money has been spent eradicating or culling them in an attempt to help protect the outback's fragile rangelands. More on the ethics of animal culling in just a bit. As part of our journey today, since our topic revolves around an animal causing a lot of problems for humans, and since Australia seems to have a reputation for having lots of animals that cause problems, I'm also going to investigate just how many things in the Australian outback can actually kill you, and how it compares to other reportedly dangerous places on earth. Today, we'll also look at some other ecological mistakes made by the settlers and or colonizers that changed the outback.

Mostly today, though, we're going to talk about the Great Emu War. What could these big birds possibly have done to warrant the military getting involved and literally bringing in machine guns to massacre them? Men versus emu. Seriously? Yep. Some Aussies sanctioned by the government

went after the bird on their national crest, their national bird. That's like Americans waging war against bald eagles. That's basically what happened in Australia. And you know what? If the situation was right, yeah, I'd kill some bald eagles. I mean, if the eagles decided to try and,

I don't know, eat a bunch of our like, you know, needed produce, I could see turning on Eagles. I'd be all for it. Those bald, greedy bastards crossed the line when they descended on Florida and ate up all of our tasty oranges. How the fuck are we supposed to enjoy mimosas now? I mean, sure, mango mimosas are, you know, delicious, but you can't beat the classic.

And what about hot cider on a cold winter's day? Gone. Gone, thanks to those goddamn eagles descending on Washington, taking the apples and good luck finding a French fry. Been weeks since I sniffed a fry. Fucking majestic freedom and produce loving vultures went buck wild on Idaho's potatoes. If all eagles took away my mashed potatoes, I would turn into a bald eagle blasting son of a bitch immediately. Australia went after emus because emus went after Australia's wheat. In the wake of World War I, hordes of emus who were decimated newly founded farms on the edge of the outback in Western Australia.

Australia's economy was tanking in the years leading up to the Great Depression, a depression that hit Australia particularly hard, and they needed that wheat, that sweet wheat. So Australia's government decided to try and save Australia's wheat by calling for a national culling of the national bird. Instead of their fellow man, the Australian farmer's enemy was a bird with a brain smaller than these men's fists. But these birds would not be beaten easily. In fact, they would pretty much win in the end. Some Australians, including politicians, even joked that the emus deserved medals. To be fair, Aussies went hard on the emus, but they could have went harder. Aussie farmers didn't roll out a bunch of tanks or fighter planes or, you know, use missiles or sarin gas or bombs on

their avian enemies. They did ask for some bombs, actually, though. But the Australian army, they did fix a machine gun to a truck in an effort to run these two-legged devil birds down, and humans still lost. They lost that round. They took the machine gun truck after, and they lost all the rounds, basically. Before we dig into some round-by-round coverage of this war, let's get a better feel for this big Commonwealth nation. Australia is an island continent, the only nation to take up an entire continent, actually. It's the world's sixth largest country, over 7.6 million square kilometers slash over 4.7 million square miles.

Lying between the Indian and Pacific Oceans, the country is approximately 4,000 kilometers slash 2,485 miles from east to west, 3,200 kilometers slash 1,988 miles from north to south, with a coastline of 36,735 kilometers or almost 23,000 miles. Population-wise, it's nowhere near the top 10. 55th most populous nation, just over 25 million people call it home.

And I always forget that it's not that populated. Pretty sparsely populated. It's over 25 times as big as Italy, for example, but less than half the population. Australia is made up of six states, Western Australia, where today's action will take place. That's the biggest state by far. Basically a third of the nation's total size, 32.9%. Fourth out of six when it comes to population with just under 2.4 million people. So an especially sparsely populated area of an especially sparsely populated land.

Almost all the people in Western Australia live in the Perth metro area, just over 2 million people, a couple of hundred thousand scattered over the rest of this giant area of land. Second biggest state is Queensland, followed by South Australia, New South Wales, Victoria,

and Tasmania, a little island off the southern, southeastern portion of the continent. And then there's the Northern Territory, a giant chunk of Australia, bigger than all but two of the states. Now, why isn't it a state? Well, it's a long story. It'll take us too far away from today's topic. It's a long-going battle regarding how much control the federal government should have over the especially rugged Northern Territory. It looks like the Northern Territory might be culturally similar to Northern Idaho. People want to do their own thing there. Finally, on mainland

Australia, there's also the little Australian capital territory. Think Washington, D.C. If D.C. included a few extra towns and a big-ass national park that lay just outside of it. It's a capital federal area. Canberra is Australia's capital city. It's the only city in the world where the men aren't legally allowed to wear shirts but are legally required to wear shark-tooth necklaces, where crocodiles can and do vote, where all the women skateboard and only wear bikinis, and where you have to be a koala bear to drive a city bus. And, of course, that's crazy, but it paints an interesting picture that I enjoy thinking about.

Why did my mind pick those details? Back to reality. With a population of approximately 380,000 people situated in the Australian Capital Territory, Canberra, roughly halfway between Australia's two largest cities of Melbourne and Sydney. Not Melbourne. Melbourne. I'm watching a lot of videos. Weather-wise, the majority of Australia experiences temperate weather for most of the year. You could do a lot worse. It's got pretty good weather. The northern states of Australia typically warm all the time, with the southern states experiencing cool winters but rarely sub-zero temperatures. Surf in the summer, drive a bit, and snowboard in the winter. Snow falls on

the higher mountains during the winter months, enabling skiing in southern New South Wales and Victorian ski resorts, as well as smaller resorts in Australia's island state, Tasmania. Tasmania looks fucking awesome, by the way. Not that the rest of the country doesn't, but I was looking at some pictures, and very nice. Australia's first inhabitants, the aboriginal people, are believed to have migrated from some unknown point in Asia to Australia between 50,000 and 60,000 years ago. While British explorer Captain James Cook is often credited with Australia's European discovery in 1770,

and he did first explore the eastern seaboard, and 1778 is when the British first colonized the continent, neither he nor the British first discovered Australia for Europe. A Portuguese ship possibly first sighted the country. Actually, the Spanish, Chinese, Arabs, even the Romans have claimed to have spotted Australia in their histories, but little credible evidence for those nations.

The Dutch though, we know they began exploring the Western coastal regions beginning in 1606. Now, why didn't they colonize it? Well, because they landed in the wrong places. They saw the western coast, not far from where our story takes place, and they were like, fuck that.

We can't live in that place. A big-ass land of desert, bush, and strange, creepy vermin. Not even windmills can turn that land into something useful. How are we supposed to grow tulips there? It may not have been exactly like that, but they did assume that the land was mostly uninhabitable. They saw no benefit in settling it. Then the British saw some land over on the east side of the continent.

They're like, oh, yeah, yeah, this will do. Maybe, maybe, maybe this will do. Let's send some prisoners over first. Let's see how they fare. If they can't make it work, well, no big whoop. As the king likes to say, if they can, bingo, bango, new colony time. Fuck yeah, nice. He said something like that.

Australia became a nation on January 1st, 1901, when the British Parliament passed legislation enabling the six Australian colonies, New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, Western Australia, and Tasmania to collectively govern in their own right as the Commonwealth of Australia. Australia follows a Westminster system of government and law inherited from the British who originally colonized the country. It's technically a constitutional monarchy, just like the UK. There are two main political parties, the Australian Labor Party, Australia's liberals, and I love this, and the Liberal Party, ironically, are the conservatives. It's very confusing. The Liberal

Party tends to promote economic liberalism, which in the Australian usage actually refers to free markets and small government, which would be comparable to like Republicans in America, so conservatives. The Australian Labor Party has been described as an alliance of social Democrats, democratic socialists, and trade unions. So, you know, on the left. There are also a number of minor parties. They all make up the Commonwealth Parliament.

Each state and territory also has its own government. The Code of Arms of Australia, officially called the Commonwealth Code of Arms, is the formal symbol of the Commonwealth of Australia, and it has an emu on it.

And the first arms were authorized by British King Edward VII on May 7th, 1908, in the King's vision by King George V on September 19th, 1912. And if Australia declared independence from Britain before that, then why are British kings authorizing anything Australian? Why don't they shut the fuck up and go back to their country? How weird would that be if I just got so angry about that? No, I'm not invested.

Well, because the British Kings were authorizing Australian stuff because Australia kind of, but not really still likes to kiss the ring. Kind of. Easy Aussies, easy, easy. Your nation likes to have royalty, just not royalty you have to take seriously,

which is hard for us to understand here in America. Australia's relationship with the British crown is unique. The British crown in general is just weird to me at this point in time. As part of the Commonwealth, when the king or queen visits Australia, I found this odd, he or she speaks and acts as a king or queen of Australia now,

not as king or queen of the UK. I imagine the queen turning her crown around when she flies over Australian soil, like Sylvester Sloan, turning his trucker hat around and over the top. She shifts into Aussie mode, maybe sets her scepter down, grabs a big ass fucking knife. As the constitutional monarch, the British crown is not actually involved in the day-to-day business of the Australian government, but the monarch continues to play an important ceremonial and symbolic role. I took an entire class for an entire semester on Britain's government back in college when I spent a semester in London. I got an A and I still left not really understanding why the British crown still exists and why the British Commonwealth still exists.

I remember asking numerous Londoners and I got a lot of answers centered around tradition, essentially. You know, I guess we as a species, we just tend to like rituals, traditions, routines, maybe also a lot of little girls, you know, thanks to fairy tales, they love dreaming of being princesses.

I don't know, is that a part of it? I'm not sure. Also the tradition of the crown does help bind the nations of the British Commonwealth. You know, why that a part of it? I'm not sure. Also, the tradition of the crown does help bind the nations of the British Commonwealth. You know, why is there still a Commonwealth? The stated purpose of the voluntary Commonwealth is for international cooperation and to advance economics, social development, and human rights in member countries. It's like a big club.

It's like the Freemasons for nations. They get to help each other out, you know, have better trade, you know, maybe come to each other's aid in times of trouble. Now, do they need a king or a queen for that? I don't think so. If it makes them feel good, if it gives news pundits and tabloids something to gossip about, I guess whatever.

From what I gather, if they did get rid of their allegiance to the crown, most Australians just wouldn't give a shit. Most would not seem to think that their day-to-day lives would change at all. Maybe we should have that in the U.S. Maybe we should have a powerless monarch, just some figurehead. That'd be probably a fun job, right?

A crown without the stress of all the decisions, without the stress of everyone trying to, you know, take your throne. Who should it be? I don't know. Just, you know, spitballing. How about me? I'll do it. King Cummins the Magnificent.

Come on, let me try. I won't get to weigh in on important political decisions, which is, spitballing. How about me? I'll do it. King Cummins the Magnificent. Come on, let me try. I won't get to weigh in on important political decisions, which is probably good for everyone, but it'll be a cool palace I get to live in. I'll, you know, I'll master my little wave.

I'll show up to all the ceremonies. I'll get to wear a crown. That'll be fun. You know, if my wife, Lindsay, gets too fucking sassy, maybe I get to have her beheaded. I'm not sure. I don't know the rules.

You know, we're gonna have to pin a lot of things down. Probably won't get to do that, but it her beheaded. I'm not sure. I don't know the rules. You know, we're gonna have to pin a lot of things down. Probably won't get to do that, but it'd be a fun threat to throw out. Hopefully I'll get to yell at peasants and wenches while I gnaw on a big, greasy turkey leg. That'd be fun. Yes, yes. Most excellent. I concur. More wine. Very well then. Long live the king. Oh, I'm not supposed to say that. Others are, really. Well, then say it, damn you. Say long live the king.

Or off with your heads. I don't have that authority. Well, why am I speaking in a knockoff Shakespeare summer theater accent? Come on, come on, guys. I'm trying to have fun. You're being fucking dicks. Why did I even put on my crown today? Why did I put this heavy ass cape on?

Get carried here by fucking peasant actors to be disrespected. Sorry. Gotten way off track. Back to that Australian coat of arms. It shows a shield depicting symbols of Australia's six states being held up by the native Australian animals, the kangaroo and the emu. Seven pointed Commonwealth star surmounting the crest also represents the states and territories while floral emblems appear below the shield.

A couple more land-down-under facts before we narrow our focus, honing on Western Australia, where action takes place today. Australia boasts some of the world's most beautiful natural wonders, such as the Great Barrier Reef, the world's largest coral reef system. The crazy-looking giant sandstone formation known as Ayers Rock, aka Uluru in South Northwest territories, the fun to say Bungle Bungles Rock formation in Western Australia, the 12 apostles giant limestone stacks off the coast of Victoria along the Great Ocean Road, and on and on and on. A lot of cool geography. Man-made icons in Australia include the Sydney Harbour Bridge and of course the iconic Sydney Opera House. Longest icons in Australia include the Sydney Harbour Bridge and, of course, the iconic Sydney Opera House. Longest river in Australia is the Murray River, which is 2,375 kilometers, almost 1,500 miles long.

The Murray River begins in New South Wales, then travels to Victoria, finally South Australia, where the Murray Mouth meets the Southern Ocean, a.k.a. the Antarctic Ocean. The Murray River is home to a variety of wildlife such as platypus, Murray cod, golden perch, and trout. The river is also famous for its paddle steamers, and there are paddle steamers that cruise along the river for several days. Sounds very nice. Now let's check out the part of Western Australia where the Great Emu War occurred. The actual location of the war was the Campion District of Chandler, Western Australia Very rural

No disrespect to you if you live in this area But, after looking it over I would literally rather set my fucking balls on fire Than have to live there with you Now that I've said that out loud, it does feel a tad disrespectful It's very isolated Too isolated for me The now mostly abandoned settlement Only about 100 people currently live there, part of Australia's Wheatbelt.

And the Wheatbelt in general is so rural. This little town here, this Campion district of Chandler, not close to anything other than other towns of maybe just a few hundred people. Almost four hours drive from Perth, out there in the Wheatbelt. The Wheatbelt, one of nine regions of Western Australia defined as administrative areas for the state's regional development. It partially surrounds the Perth metropolitan area, extending north from Perth to the Midwest region, and east to the massive, nearly 300,000 square mile Goldfields-Esperance region. Altogether, this Wheatbelt has an area of 154,000, excuse me, 862 square kilometers, almost 60,000 square miles. And today an estimated 137,000 people live in it. Little over two people per square mile, 2.29. That is very, very rural. For comparison,

I live in Idaho, as most of you know, one of the most rural states in the US and our population per square mile, 19.8. Alaska has the lowest population density of any US state by far, 1.3 people per square mile. That's because most of it is just fucking frozen for most of the year. The Wheat Belt accounts for only approximately 3% of Western Australia's population,

a lot of farms and not much else. If you hate other people, but love wheat, especially farming it, well, you might want to move there. This region is divided into 42 local government administrative districts. Most of them don't have a thousand people in them.

The area once upon a time had a diverse ecosystem and then it was cleared by settlers in the 1890s. Beginning in the 1890s, they started removing native plant species like eucalyptus. Now it's home to around 11% of Australia's critically endangered plants. It's for people who hate other people the most and hate farming, but love sheep. They just fucking love sheep. Actually, there's, speaking of fucking sheep, this is crazy, craziest stats I found with this episode. Some government stats in Australia say that somewhere between 70 and 80% of the people

who live in the Eastern Wheatbelt have engaged in some form of bestiality, 70 to 80%. There's not a lot of people there. That's a very high percentage though. Over 60% of the men, over 90% of the women, over 95% of senior women over the age of 65 reported to engage in bestiality on a regular basis. How weird would that be if that's true? It's the largest group of sheep fuckers. It was elderly women. Nana likes her wool fresh. Not a lot of sheep fucking that I'm aware of. In addition to sheep's raising,

also some mining, mostly for gold, iron, nickel. The remainder of the region is more suited to agriculture and is the source of nearly two thirds of the state's wheat production. Half of its wool production and the majority of its lamb and mutton, oranges, honey, and flowers, as well as a range of other agricultural and pastoral products. Previous to Australian colonization, there was, of course, no wheat belt at all, just raw land, local flora. Then meat sacks showed up, started engineering the land around the shit

that they like to eat. Humans first showed up in Western Australia between 40,000, 60,000 years ago when the indigenous Australians arrived on the Northwest coast. Took a lot longer for Europeans to make it, right? That first fleet arrived in 1788. It was carrying more than 700 convicts to start a new penal settlement at Sydney. Came over from Britain, you know, then they took a while for them to get clear across the continent. Additional convict ships arrived in 1790, 1791. Those early fleets also brought hundreds of free people to the colony, mostly soldiers and their families. The first people to be considered free settlers, that is people who made their own decision to migrate to the colony, they arrived aboard the

Bologna in early 1793, or B Bellana, along with 17 female prisoners from Britain. Thomas Rose and his family, plus several others, settled on land they called Liberty Plains, which is now in the suburbs of Sydney, New South Wales. Although free settlers continued to arrive in New South Wales in the years that followed, they were outnumbered by convicts for the first few decades. few decades. Then a few decades later, in December of 1826, an expedition commissioned by the New South Wales colonial government, led by Major Edmund Lockyer, landed at King George Sound, which would lead to a settlement in Western Australia, the first. The early settlement became the city of Albany, where about 35,000 people now live. On January 21st, 1827, Lockyer formally took possession of the Western third of the continent of Australia for the British crown. I'm sure thousands and thousands of Aboriginal people were not notified of this and just went on living their

lives in the outback, not giving a fuck who thought they were in charge now for many decades. How strange. This was followed by the establishment of the Swan River Colony in 1829, including the site of Western Australia's present-day capital of Perth. As I mentioned before, Perth, Australia's fourth most populous city, definitely the biggest city over in Western Australia, a population of 2.06 million. It bustles with new bars, restaurants, shopping, cultural spaces. Did you know the Tame Impala, Kevin Parker's band, came out of Perth? One of the more popular and critically acclaimed alt kind of indie bands the last five or so years in the world. Thought that was kind of fun.

Been listening to a lot of them the past few days. Just a short drive away are the beautiful wineries of the Swan Valley and a string of stunning beaches where you can watch amazing sunsets, swim with wild dolphins. But back in the early 19th century, there was none of this stuff. Well, the dolphins, but that was about it. There was no cities anywhere around. There was mostly just miles and miles of pretty unforgiving terrain. Founded in 1829, Perth still only had 3,000 people by 1870. And it was the biggest city in all of massive Western Australia. Almost no one lived in Western Australia as far as European colonizers and their descendants until the early 20th century outside of, again, like, yeah, until the early 20th century. The first free colonial

settlers paid their own way to Australia, meaning they were typically quite prosperous, but then there wasn't enough of those people heading out there to encourage more settlement, to encourage settlement among the less wealthy. The British colonial government began to pay for transportation costs for migrants in the early 1800s. As we know, a place is super cool to live in when the government has to pay people to move there. In addition to paying moving costs, the government also gave settlers free land on the condition they use it for productive purpose, you know, like ranching, farming. This offer appealed to people who are suffering from unemployment and poverty in Britain as a result of the Industrial Revolution. The government also paid these largely British

settlers with free agricultural tools and convict labor to help them establish their farms in the 1800s. I picture all of this coming through a series of just negotiations, you know, just come on, just move there. No. We'll pay your moving costs. Just move there. No. We'll give you for land. No. Come on. We'll give you free farming equipment. We'll give you some slave, I mean, convict labor. So slave labor then? Yes. Okay then. I'll consider it. Life was hard for most of Australia's early settlers, probably especially for the convict laborers. By 1868, over 9,000 convicts had been transported to Western Australia on 43 different convict ships.

The colonists struggled to find fertile land and the hot, dry climate made farming pretty difficult. The seasons were different from Britain's. Most of the plants and animals were unfamiliar. Starvation was a constant concern during the colony's first few years. All of the settlers, men, women, children, convicts, mostly convicts probably, had to contribute to keep the colony from failing. The first challenges were to clear the often thickly wooded land and build fences around farms. They did their best to grow crops

in this unfamiliar environment, learning from successes and failures. First settlers found an abundance of trees, but few were useful for building. Over time, the settlers found different kinds of trees that were strong and durable, but easier to cut. With wood from these trees, they built crude homes known as slab huts. They split pieces of timber from logs,

using some to make posts, leaving others as rough slabs. They used the posts to build a frame, the slabs to make walls. The roof was made of thatch. Shingles split from trees or sheets of bark. leaving others as rough slabs. They used the post to build a frame, the slabs to make walls. The roof was made of thatch. Shingles split from trees or sheets of bark. Bark roofs were modeled off roofs they saw in the shelters of aboriginal peoples.

Children even worked hard. The children of most free settlers had to work alongside their mothers and fathers. Typical chores included fetching water from the well or the river, washing dishes, helping with the laundry, gathering wood. It sucked!

Children also did farm work, such as feeding the hens, gathering eggs, milking the cows, shearing sheep, harvesting crops. Girls were expected to knit and sew, cook, clean, make beds,

as well as look after younger siblings. Boys helped their fathers in construction work, farming work, whatever they were doing. There was very few schools in the early years of the settlement. Most kids didn't go to school. Conditions did improve as settlers expanded inland a little bit from the coast, opening up more fertile lands for farming, as well as vast tracts for raising livestock. Swan River Colony was renamed Western Australia in 1832. The colony struggled, and by the 1840s, the colonists were in need of additional workers to keep the settlement viable. At their request, the British government converted Western Australia to a convict colony

in 1849. Colonization of Australia helped happen at the expense of the continent's indigenous people, similar to kind of how U.S. expansion came at the expense of North American tribes. At first, relations between the aboriginal people and the European newcomers were friendly. Conflicts soon developed as the Europeans, though, expanded their settlements into aboriginal people and the european newcomers were friendly conflicts soon developed as the europeans though expanded their settlements into aboriginal territory aboriginal resistance to the invasion of their lands led to violent clashes of course it did ultimately more than 20 000 aboriginal people and almost 2 000 europeans estimated to have died in the conflicts diseases carried by the colonists killed many more aboriginal people in the 1830s and 1840s both

the british public and the australian colonists grew many more Aboriginal people. In the 1830s and 1840s, both the British public and the Australian colonists grew increasingly critical of transportation and the British practice of shipping convicts to Australia. The British government ended transportation to eastern Australia in 1852. In Western Australia, transportation of convicts continued until 1868. And then after that, all of Australia's settlers were, you know, free. In the 1880s, gold, gold discovered in Western Australia. Prospectors, by the tens of thousands, swarmed the land in a desperate attempt to discover new mines. Western Australia gained the right of self-government in 1890, joined with the five other states to form the Commonwealth of Australia in 1901.

Then the wealth generated from that gold soon disappeared. Gold rushes tend not to last real long. By the early 20th century, the region's economy was once again dependent on wool and wheat. Then a global depression in the late 1920s and early 1930s left most nations with little to no ability to buy Western Australia's wheat and wool. Cue economic freefall. Shit. Then on top of an economic crisis, there was a huge drought in the 1930s. Cue near total economic collapse. Then the fucking emu showed up to eat what little wheat the farmers had left.

These farmers who were already really struggling to survive. Cue, let's get some goddamn machine guns and fuck these birds up. It's them or us. Now let's meet these emus. Right after we meet some of Australia's other treacherous beasts, is Australia really a land of dangerous animals that can kill you? I talked about that earlier.

How true is that reputation? It's kind of true. Kangaroos do kill one to two Aussies a year when someone hits them with a car. Not a great example. There are dangerous animals in and around Australia for sure. Humans just don't come into contact with them a lot. The box jellyfish actually hands down is the most dangerous of all the creatures in or around Australia. There are not just one species actually, but a whole class of super venomous jellyfish. One of the species is the sea wasp. What a horrible name

for a creature. Sea wasp. They have been described as the most lethal jellyfish in the world. Not only are these jellyfish hard to see in the deceptively deadly waters during the warmer months, they can also kill you in as little as two minutes. Box jellyfish have claimed over 64 lives in Australia since 1883. In addition to box jellyfish, Australia's waters are teeming with other highly venomous creatures. Right at the top of that list is the stinging stonefish that makes its home hiding among the rocks and the sand.

In the water, Brian Fry, a venom researcher at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, paints quite the picture of the horror this creature can unleash, saying that the stonefish produces such mind-blowing agony that the stonefish produces such mind-blowing agony that the body goes into shock and the person dies. Did you just hear death from pain in that description? That's what I heard. The pain from the sting can be lethal. That sounds

impossible. Some sea snakes, aka coral reef snakes, are among the most venomous snakes in the world. They slink around Australian coastal waters. About 3,000 people are bitten by snakes in Australia each year, resulting in an average of just two deaths, though, and 550 hospitalizations. There are snails that can kill you, technically, cone snails, highly venomous marine snails. They slide across the seafloor. The smallest cone snail is in part a sting that's about as powerful as a bee sting,

but the sting of larger species can kill an adult human in a couple of hours. Have these snails killed any Australian zoo? It doesn't seem to be a problem. Maybe not. So scary possibility, but maybe not a big danger. What about saltwater crocodiles? Largest reptiles in the world. They get about one Aussie a year. One very unlucky Aussie. What about bull sharks, sharks that are responsible for more shark attacks than any other shark species? Some of them make their homes in Australia's coastal waters. They kill only a few Australians a year on average, 98 total shark attack deaths in Australia between 1988 and 2018.

So, you know, that's not too bad. Unless you're one of those 98 people. Then, you know, that's a pretty fucking rough way to go, I'd imagine. What about land predators? Let's get up in that bush! You get it. The bush is home to a host of venomous critters. Snakes are by far

the most threatening. There are about 170 species of land snakes in the land down under. For comparison, the U.S. has about 50 different species. Wisconsin snakes in the land down under. For comparison, the U.S. has about 50 different species. Wisconsin randomly is home to 21 of them. Did not expect that. Did not picture the land of cheese, right, to be such a snake pit. But clearly, I don't know a lot about snakes. We learned that a few episodes ago. The coastal Taipan is one of Australia's particularly horrifying snaky inhabitants. The coastal Taipan is the third most venomous snake in the world. It rivals only Africa's black mamba in ferocity. When surprised

or cornered, the coastal taipan strikes repeatedly, delivering high doses of venom. There's also the eastern brown snake, the western brown snake, the mainland tiger snake. It's a better name. All fast-moving, aggressive motherfuckers known for bad tempers. Bites from all these snakes can be fatal if untreated, causing pain in the feet, neck, tingling, numbness, sweating. Your kidneys can fall out. Your heart can explode. Maybe not those things, but breathing difficulties, eventually paralysis. And there are many more terrifying snakes like the common death adder. Unlike other snakes that flee from approaching humans, crashing through the undergrowth, death adders, more likely to sit tight, risk being stepped on.

About half of death adder bites proved to be fatal, or did prove to be fatal, before the introduction of antivenom. The deaths from these snakes are very rare now. Deaths from all snakes, pretty rare now in the Western world in modern times because of antivenom. Since the development of many antivenoms, fatalities in Australia from snake bites have gone down to between four and six deaths a year. So with all these creatures, how dangerous is the Australian outdoors compared to other parts of the world? In one maybe pretty arbitrary rating system we found, Australia, specifically the northern Australia region, ranked as only the fifth most dangerous place on earth. Still high, but not the highest.

Other surveys and articles had it lower than fifth, but how could that be? They have great whites. What about the snakes? What about the crocodiles? What about the snails? What about those scary snails? Well, for starters, many of these creatures aren't found in populated areas. Unless you're deliberately seeking them out, you're very unlikely to see any dangerous animals in Australia, let alone come into contact with them. There have also been, you know, many developments and antidotes. Antivenom, like we talked about, Australia knows that there are a lot of dangerous species around, so they take precautions to ensure that everyone, especially uninformed, stupid tourists, remain safe. Essentially, most beaches you visit will have lifeguards present

who will announce when it is unsafe to go into the water, as well as shark helicopters that monitor popular beaches for marine life activity. Maybe some snail drones. I don't know. I didn't look into it.

Lifeguards also on the hunt for dangerous jellyfish floating in the water. They'll ensure everyone gets the hell out of the water if they spot those devil sea wasps. On average, only around three people in total die each year from wild animal-related incidents in Australia. Like three to five compared to like five people who die in Britain in cow-related incidents each year, right? Eight people die in Australian horse-related accidents each year. 13 people die globally each year in vending machine related accidents. 58 people die in Australia from falling out of the bed each year. 285 people drown in Australia each year,

right? 1500 people die in Australia per year in road accidents. If Australia is fifth in the list of most dangerous places for wildlife on earth, what are the others in the top four? I was surprised to see that the Arctic wasn't on the list. Number four is the US and Canada. Did not see that coming. US and Canada, you know, bears, big cats, venomous snakes, alligators, wolves, maybe wendigos. Plus we have tons of venomous bugs from spiders to scorpions. Number three, the Amazon with piranhas, anacondas prowling the Amazon River, wandering spiders and jaguars, prowling the Amazon rainforest. Amazon, maybe not the best place to get lost.

Number two is India. Between the tigers, bears, elephants, cobras, and crocodiles, India highly populated with deadly creatures. Combine that with high overall population, high population density, you can have a big problem. It's actually estimated that tigers have attacked

and killed at least 373,000 people. I know it's not really funny, but mostly in Southern Asia between 1800 and 2009. That's so many. And they are still nabbing the occasional villager. 95 people got fucking nabbed by tigers in 2019. That's so much higher than I thought it was going to be. The most dangerous part of the world is sub-Saharan Africa, right? Big cats, crocodiles, hippos, venomous snakes, horrendous diseases. Africa, the most dangerous continent on earth in some ways.

Hippopotamuses, the most dangerous animals in Africa, not even lions or crocodiles can rival their death tolls. I always forget about them. In one recent and horrifying incident, a hippo capsized a boat full of school children and killed 13 out of roughly 18 people on board. And they kill about 500 people a year. Fucking hippos.

In comparison with other countries, maybe Australia's wild animals, not all that dangerous. Sure, sometimes they kill, but not that many people a year. Meanwhile, over, you know, 35,000 people die in traffic fatalities each year in the US. And like I said before, you know,

around 1,200 Aussies killed in traffic fatalities there. So you're a lot likelier to die driving into the outback than you are getting out of your car or truck and hiking around and getting killed by a critter. You're more likely to die getting on the freeway to head to the beach than you are to die in the water next to the beach, you know, getting attacked by a bull shark or a croc or sea wasp or death snail.

Now let's stop talking about the rest of the animal kingdom, killing humans and start talking about humans killing the rest of the animal kingdom, since that's what the Great Emu War is really all about. Humans by far are the most lethal predators on the planet. It is estimated that each year, and this is such an insane number, 77 billion land animals are killed by humans. 77 billion.

And what about water creatures? Get ready for some crazier numbers. Estimated that between one and three trillion fish are caught every year globally. And that doesn't include billions and billions of fish that are farmed and harvested. Most of the 77 billion land animals I mentioned raised to be slaughtered for food next to that, hunting the most common way non-human surface creatures are killed by humans. And culling is lumped into the human portion of the kills, right? It's a kind

of hunting that doesn't necessarily involve any interest in eating the animal. And culling lays at the heart of the Great Emu War. So we should talk about culling here. Culling is the reduction of a wild animal population by selective slaughter. And while it may sound terrible to some modern ears, it still happens,

and it's been happening for a long, long time. The ethics of culling are debatable. Some people, many people, think it is more ethical to kill a certain portion of an animal population so the rest of the population doesn't have to compete with one another to access food and other resources. When done correctly, instead of a large population suffering and many of them dying, culling allows a smaller population to live better, to thrive. I personally am pro-culling in certain instances. PETA,

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, not pro-culling. No surprise there. They say on their website that starvation and disease are unfortunate, but they are nature's way of ensuring that the strong survive. Natural predators help keep prey species strong by killing the only ones they can catch, the sick and weak. And who cares about the weak, right? Ha ha ha, fuck them. We here at PETA only care about the strong. We save strong animal lives. Weak animals snap their skinny necks

and toss them in the fucking toilet, end quote. PETA said most of that on their website, not the last part, about hating the weak and throwing them in the toilet, which is a weird choice. PETA asked people on that on their website, not the last part, about hating the weak and throwing them in the toilet, which is a weird choice. PETA asked people on their site to go vegan to save 200 animals a year. PETA posts videos of hunters on their site with headlines like,

man repeatedly shoots trapped rising coyote in the head. And oftentimes I think, how does PETA, an organization devoted to animals, which I know they have such good intentions, they do a lot of good work, but also sometimes it feels like they don't know how fucking nature works. You ever watched one of those old mutual of Omaha wild kingdom, nature documentaries, or just any nature documentary, the natural cycle of life easily just as brutal as human hunting.

If not much more, much more. So I just watched a video while doing this research filmed in South Africa's Kruger park where a cheetah takes down an impala. It takes, it's not funny. I don't know, it's a nervous laughter. It takes about four minutes. I checked the time coding. It takes about four minutes for this poor impala to die. And it is an extremely rough four minutes.

For about two of the minutes, the cheetah is literally eating the impala's ass. Just like eating its ass off of its fucking body. Like all of it. To the point that the poor creature's hind legs no longer seem to be attached to the rest of its body. Or maybe just attached by a few scraps of hide. And it is still alive. Its head is moving around.

It's not just nerves. Its front legs are kicking. It looks like the front half of its body is trying to get away from the back half of its body. And the cheetah is just casually gnawing on its hindquarters while this is going on. Just having a nice meal out at a fine dining establishment with some friends. Pretty casual. Takes a bite. Puts a paw on the carcass.

Kind of looks around. Chews it up. Doesn't want to choke. Enjoys that meat. The paw is just writhing in agony. If that impala could talk, I really doubt it would say, This is so much better than being shot by a human.

Oh, thank you, cheetah. Thank you for eating my ass instead of snapping my neck and killing me quickly. Oh, the joy. I'm so glad I'm dying in a way PETA would approve of. Yay, circle of life.

Hakuna Matata. And what about when a species fucks its way over and above how much food is available to that species inside its given habitat? Like when some deer is slowly wasting away from starvation, if it could talk, you think it would say like, just all weak,

almost, you know, starved to death? So glad I get to die a natural death. Painfully wasting away so much better than a bullet. Thank you, nature. Come on, get out of here. Nature's brutal. If you're talking about an ethical death, I don't think you can rationally argue that being mauled to death by a predator or starving is more ethical than dying from a bullet. I would argue that the bullet is often the least cruel way an animal can die outside of dying of

old age. But in my opinion, you know, hunting, it just makes some people's hearts hurt. And they just can't seem to get past the emotional outrage of seeing a bad naughty boy or naughty girl with a gun shooting a poor defenseless animal. Between 1967, 1995, elephants were cold every year in that same South African wildlife park where I watched

that cheetah fuck up that impala's ass. Are you outraged? Animal rights activists around the world were outraged. You know who were not outraged? The game management specialists who actually worked at the park. Why not? Because they knew if they didn't control

the elephant population, numerous other species in the park would literally go extinct because giant elephants eat so much shit, not literal shit, but like a lot of food. They eat up to 300 pounds of roots, grasses, fruit, leaves, and bark a day. They trample pounds and pounds of additional plants. And they were eating the fuck out of these plants

that other animals needed to survive. But then too many people got sad about the elephants being shot. And so they stopped being cold. And now the elephants are reducing precious tree cover by eating and destroying more trees than ever. Now other species that need that tree cover, like black rhinoceroses, critically endangered species becoming more endangered. God forbid somebody shoot Dumbo to save another creature who is not equally represented in the toy aisle. A form of culling occurs here in the U.S. every year.

It's done to the distribution of hunting and fishing licenses. In the U.S., hunting licenses, hunting seasons, a means by which the population of game animals is maintained. Each season, a hunter is allowed to kill a certain amount of wild animals determined by species and gender. The population seems to have, you know, a lot of surplus females. Hunters are allowed to take more females during that hunt season. The population is below what's desired. Hunters may not be permitted to hunt that particular species or in that area or be, you know, restricted, you know, to how many males, whatever they can kill.

And in Australia, there's been a lot of culling done over the years as well. Both of animals that were residents before Europeans showed up, like the emu and the kangaroo, and of some of the animals the Europeans brought that ended up being way too good at making more of themselves.

In modern times, licenses or required steps are taken to make the process as humane as possible. And that's the case with, you know, the millions of kangaroos that are killed each year. That's right. Take it. Fucking put your big boy pants on. Put your big girl pants on. Millions of kangaroos are killed each year.

Why? Because they're too good at fucking. They're pretty good at boxing. They're better at being cute. They're the best at fucking themselves into overpopulation. And they end up eating the feed Aussie ranchers would like to see go to their cattle and sheep. And if they're not cold, the sheep and cattle will start to starve. They'll die. The ranchers will lose their livelihoods. And a lot of people who are disgusted by the killing of sweet baby kangaroos

will lose their burgers, steaks, casseroles, et cetera. And then they'll be sad. And that's my favorite. When someone who's not a vegetarian or a vegan complains about hunting, especially while eating a meal with meat, like the information coming out of their mouth and the food going into their mouth doesn't match up too well. And again, even if we all became vegan, animals are still going to die. Some populations are going to fuck their way

into numbers that endanger other populations or endanger themselves. It will lead to mass starvation, disease outbreaks. The only real ethical argument I see when it comes to game management and ranching is what quality of life do animals get before they're killed? How painful is the killing compared to what would happen to them if they died in the wild?

Forcing an animal to live in a tiny cage and giving it a cruel death. Okay, all right, I get the argument in favor of animal rights there. Or in the case of the Great Emu War, what if culling the animals actually doesn't help their species and is more painful than the death they would naturally suffer, but does save human lives or at least save a lot of human livelihoods? What are the ethics there? I will agree that that's a

trickier moral conundrum. And it's why the Great Emu War became controversial. While a lot of people were in favor of killing the emus, a lot of people were against it as well. Okay, now we've learned about culling. Now let's learn about the targets of the culling, the emu themselves, or to use the war metaphor, the enemy. Just what are these insane things? Emus are enormous, flightless birds, only native to Australia, though they now find themselves living in a variety of zoos across the world. Emus can be as tall as 6 foot 2 inches, 1.8 meters, and they can weigh up to 120 pounds or 54 kilograms.

On average, they're about 5 feet long from head to tail. They have long legs, stout bodies, and they're pretty tasty. They make for some good and healthy eating. We'll get to that in a bit. As big as these crazy-looking birds are, they're not the biggest birds on Earth. They're the tasty. Makes for some good and healthy eating. We'll get to that in a bit. As big as these crazy looking birds are, they're not the biggest birds on earth. They're the second largest. The largest measured by mass is the common ostrich,

which lives on the plains of Africa and Arabia. Those fuckers can grow over nine feet tall, right? Three feet taller than emus. And I've eaten ostrich before and it is delicious. Does not taste like chicken. Tastes like steak. That threw me, right? Ostrich tastes and looks more like beef. Tastes like steak. That threw me. Right?

Ostrich tastes and looks more like beef, the meat does, than it does poultry. Ostrich filet, very similar to a filet mignon, but leaner, actually. Wish I was having it for dinner. Clearly, I'm hungry. Refocusing. The second biggest emu is also the second largest living dinosaur running around on our planet today. That's right, dinosaur. Scientists believe

that prehistoric birds began roaming the outback some 80 million years ago around the time Tyrannosaurus Rex was stomping around. The Cretaceous period was home to a lot of the dinos we know and love today, like Velociraptors. And Velociraptors probably enjoyed tasty emu steaks as much as I enjoy ostrich steak. Pretty cool. The emu, prehistoric bird, both male and female emu, brownish in color. The bases of their feathers are white. They don't have feathers on their heads and necks. And their skin has like a dark bluish grayish tinge. They generally live between 10 and 20 years in the wild and up to 35 in captivity.

It's pretty crazy to live so much longer in captivity. Better food, I guess. But those wheat-munching emus lived longer than, you know, than normally emus would live in the wild. Excuse me. Emus are flightless. Their wings are pretty much totally useless. Account for only one-tenth of the length of their bodies.

With no need to fly, their wings are typically less than eight inches. They look ridiculous. This big-ass bird and this little teeny tiny wing, about the size of a human hand. While their wings don't work too well, their legs work real good. They can run like motherfuckers. Their spooky looking three-toed dinosaur feet can propel them to speeds of up to around 30 miles an hour. Google says their max speed is 31 miles per hour. That's around 50 kilometers an hour. To put that in context, the fastest runner in the world, Usain Bolt, eight-time Olympic medalist,

four-time World Athletics Championship medalist, ran 100 meter dash in 9.58 seconds in 2009. Reached a top speed of 44.64 kilometers per hour or 27.8 miles per hour during that sprint. That emu whooped his ass in that race. Emus are so fast in part because they're the only birds with calf muscles, which also looks creepy on them. Those calf muscles allow them to jump a staggering seven feet up into the air. They are like little dinosaurs.

If they had hands instead of their shitty little wings, they would win all of the world's slam dunk competitions every year. They can run, they can jump, and these dinosaurs can fight. When emus are cornered, they can use their gnarly looking toes and five inch talons to kick at their opponent.

Reports of emu attacks resulted in a range of injuries in Australia and in wild animal parks have been reported, or excuse me, have occurred. I don't know what I'm saying. I said report earlier in the sentence. I meant to not say it until the end. Emu farms, zoos across the world.

There's been attacks there as well. More than 100 attacks occurred in 2009 alone around the world. Could not find an article referencing an emu in Australia actually killing someone, but they have attacked and injured people for sure. And some of their kind of cousin birds have killed a few people. Emus really also like shiny shit, like buttons and belt buckles. If you don't want to be attacked, don't wear something shiny. Take it down on the sequence.

Also, like many wild animals, real good at fucking. After mating, female emus lay somewhere between 5 and 15 dark green eggs at about 5 inches around, and then she bails, and then the male will spend around 8 weeks incubating the eggs in a ground nest. And during that period, he will not eat or drink anything. Emu dads are the best dads. Males often

lose up to a third of their body weight sitting on those damn eggs waiting for him to hatch. And after that eight-week parenting nightmare, daddy's job is to chase away anything that comes near his baby chicks, which has got to be tough because he is fucking hungry. He is hangry. And he will chase around other females, even the chick's own mother. Emu moms not to be trusted. All emus have mommy issues. Little baby emus are born with stripes. They're just under 10 inches tall.

Pretty cute. Emu daddies stay with the chicks for up to two years. And then they probably think after all that, not doing that again, not worth it. And then about 30 seconds later, they start chasing their dick around into another parenting nightmare. I get it. You know, as a dick owner,

I will say it's pretty funny chasing them around. Hello, Safina. As adults, emus usually hang out in small flocks called mobs, forage for food like fruits, or fruits. They get themselves some fruits. You know what I'm talking about. They forage for food like fruit and insects. Also get themselves some fruits. You know what I'm talking about. They forage for food

like fruit and insects. Also big fans of wheat. And there are three subspecies of emu on earth inhabiting Northern, Southeastern, and Southwestern Australia. A fourth subspecies now extinct, once lived in Tasmania. The wheat eating emus of 1932 caused all that ruckus. We're just doing what emus had evolved to do in arid Australia. They were migrating long distances for food and water, right? And then one lucky year, they're like, what is this? They found a bunch of sweet new wheat to eat during their travels. Humans had accidentally grown an oasis for them and they liked it very much. And now we've met the opposite team. A couple more emu facts, and then we're off into the timeline. One emu egg can make an omelet big enough to feed four to six adults.

Yum. There are actually a few parts of the bird that make it a valuable source of nutrition. A decade or so ago, the emu was even billed as America's next red meat. I'm all for it. It's flesh, a nutritionist dream, lean meat, low in cholesterol.

Sweet. High in iron and vitamin C. Fans eating emu say that it tastes just like filet mignon, just like those ostriches. But American ranchers haven't really been interested. They've been focusing on these tasty dino birds because they don't have enough meat on their bodies compared to like a cow. Like one 80 to a hundred pound bird only yields about 30 pounds of boneless meat, where a big ass cow could yield about 550 pounds of meateless meat, where a big-ass cow could yield about 550 pounds of meat. However, maybe more Americans will start raising emus because in addition to their meat, you can sell precious oil made from their fat that skincare lovers like my wife love.

Emu oil has been shown to relieve arthritis pain, muscle soreness, joint stiffness, widely added to beauty skin products like face and body moisturizers, as well as cosmetics. Using shampoos and conditioners, proven to be an effective anti-wrinkle cream. Let's get us some Emu's. Main ingredients often listed with Emu oil is Kalaya oil. Kalaya means Emu in the Aboriginal language. Sounds a little fancier, a little more spa-like. One Emu has around 24 pounds of fat, which can be processed into two gallons of oil or 20, 256 ounces, excuse me, of oil. And emu oil can sell for as much as $20 per ounce. There's some money there. Then there are the eggs. Emus can lay up to 50 eggs a year. And emu eggs featured in some of Australia's top restaurants now. They've come into kind of fashion recently.

The emerald colored eggs are high demand, are in high demand in Australia. They're high in protein, the size of about eight chicken eggs a piece. People say they taste different than chicken eggs, a lot richer. Okay, now that we know a thing or two about emus, how they live, how they move, how they taste, let's jump into this week's Time Suck timeline

right after a quick sponsor break. Thank you for listening. Now it's the great emu war time. Trap on those boots, soldier. We're marching down a Time Suck Timeline. Backing up just a bit to the beginning of World War I. July 28th, 1914, Australia plays an interesting role in this global conflict. Less than three weeks after the outbreak of the war, Australia declares war on Germany on August 14th, 1914, following Britain's declaration of war 10 days earlier. In Australia, both Prime Minister Joseph Cook and opposition leader Andrew Fisher, who were in the midst of an election campaign, pledged full support for Britain.

The outbreak of war was greeted in Australia, as in many other places, though not the U.S. initially, with great enthusiasm. The Australian government got cracking on all sorts of measures that would encourage more Aussies to fight, like military pensions, benefits, medical treatments. They started to put all this into place before 1914's close. Over the ensuing next few years, these measures would be gradually improved to meet as far as possible the needs of the nation's veterans and their dependents. Little did they know in doing this, they were creating a path that would lead to another war, the Great Emu War. On April 25th,

1915, troops of the 1st Australian Imperial Force at Galapagos in modern day Turkey as part of an allied contingent this was the era and scene of one of our most recent sucks the nightmarish hell on earth that was the Armenian genocide fuck the Young Turks for the vast majority

of the 16,000 Australians and New Zealanders who landed on that first day this was their first experience of combat and by that first evening so much combat had occurred. 2,000 of them had been killed or wounded. The Gallopoli campaign, despite the

bravery of the Aussies fighting in it, would be a military failure. They would take heavy losses. And with injured troops coming home damn near immediately after starting to fight, the Australian government was quickly tasked with what to do with all these returning soldiers. Let's now fast forward a few years. On November 11th, 1918, now Veterans Day here in the U.S., World War I ends. Germany formally surrenders. All nations agree to stop fighting while the terms of peace are negotiated. Australia's losses from the war were heavy for a nation that numbered at the time just 4.9 million total meat sacks. The Australian Armed Forces had sent about 340,000 soldiers overseas, of whom roughly 331,000 served in the Australian Imperial Force, or AIF. That's almost 7% of the

total population. From a population of fewer than 5 million, 416,809 men enlisted, of which around 62,000 were killed, and 156,000 were wounded, gassed, or taken prisoner. Also during the war, 16,000 Australians became poison gas casualties, of whom only 325 died. Many of the thousands who survived would return to Australia plagued by respiratory problems for the remainder of their lives, ailments that could range from mild to chronic and incapacitating. Disease also severely affected these soldiers' lives, right? The Spanish flu, that pandemic of 1918, occurred during World War I.

Harsh living conditions, poor nutrition during the war, made for weak populations. The disease spread like wildfire. All told, there were nearly 438,000 non-battle casualties among the AIF during the war. Of these, 5,363 died of disease. About 1,000 killed as a result of accidents. Well, with the war over,

a couple hundred thousand survivors were sent home, and most of them had either been wounded or suffered from disease or both, and some of them returned to Western Australia, where the economy was just about to crash so hard. 1920, when repatriation of the Australian Imperial Force was completed that year, 264,000 men and women had returned to Australia, of whom 151,000 were deemed fit and 113,000 deemed unfit. Specialized hospital ships brought them home, where a medical care system took charge

of their recoveries. The general hospitals were located in state capitals, most included psychiatric and other specialist wards. These were supplemented by smaller auxiliary hospitals, convalescent centers and sanatoriums, plus small workshops to manufacture artificial limbs and appliances. In 1920, around 90,000 Australian veterans received war disability pensions. Then to make life harder for the many wounded veterans, Australia experienced high inflation from 1919 to 1920, followed by a severe recession that lasted until 1923.

The Australian economy at that time was based primarily on agriculture production, and returned soldiers were resettled on rural blocks, little potential farms on the fringes of the bush, on the fringes of the outback where it was really tough to grow stuff. Also, more than 200,000 government-sponsored British immigrants arrived in the years following World War I, with many moving to country towns. More competition for lands and jobs in a struggling economy, especially out west.

By September of 1920, the government had purchased 90,000 hectares, or, yeah, I think it's, I read that word all the time, and then when I see it, I'm like, is it Hectors? I don't think so. It's for the veterans, but they still needed more. They started to place the remaining soldiers in some pretty marginal areas of Perth and Western Australia. Around 5,030 of the ex-soldiers were given plots of land

with the idea that they would farm mainly wheat and raise sheep in that wheat belt. Land was barely usable, not least because flocks of emu ran around terrorizing the land, ready to kill someone over something shiny. Considering how hard it was to build a successful farm

with ideal circumstances, this obviously made things harder, and these are new farmers as well. Funnily enough, emus had been a protected native species up until 1922, and then in 1922, everything changed.

The emus, they fucked up. They got greedy. They made a nuisance of themselves on the new wheat farms. They then in 1922, everything changed. Emus, they fucked up. They got greedy. They made a nuisance of themselves on the new wheat farms. They started flattening crops, eating things down to a stub. They started knocking down fences, a lot of fence knocking down. That's never totally explained. I guess these big, you know, mobs of emus are just running around. They run into shit and knock things down. And they are reclassified as vermin. In 1923, a bounty system is put in place to deal with the Jurassic vermin. Bring in some dead emu hides, get some cash, right? Rinse and repeat, and the program was moderately successful. Despite the bounty placed on emu's heads, their population continued to grow, continued to thrive. Meanwhile,

in the mid-1920s, just as Australia's rural economy began to recover, so did other economies in the world. And this would shake shit up for Australia big time. The US, Canada, Argentina began producing agricultural surpluses for the global market. This created a global oversupply of Australia's main exports, wheat and sheep. Shit, not good.

The money from the gold rush years before had all but disappeared. The Australian government is borrowing vast sums of money at this point just to stay afloat. Sums that are vanishing increasingly quickly as the economy slows. Things are not looking good. October 24th, 1929. A day remembered as Black Tuesday. The American stock market crash of the 20th century,

also known as the Wall Street crash of 1929, flattens not just the U.S. economy, but global economies. During the 1920s, the U.S. stock market had undergone rapid expansion, reaching its peak in August of 1929 after a period of wild speculation during the roaring 20s. By then, production had already declined and unemployment had risen, leaving stocks in great excess of their real value. Other causes included low wages, the proliferation of debt, a struggling agricultural sector, and an excess of large bank loans that could not be liquidated. Panic set in. On October 24th, Black Thursday, a record 12,894,650 shares are traded. Investment companies, leading bankers,

attempt to stabilize the market by buying up great blocks of stock, producing a moderate rally on Friday. On Monday, however, the storm breaks anew and the market goes into freefall. Black Monday followed by Black Tuesday, in which stock prices collapsed completely. And 16,410,030 shares are traded on the New York Stock Exchange in a single day. Billions of dollars are lost, wiping out thousands of investors. Stock tickers run hours behind because the machinery are lost, wiping out thousands of investors. Stock tickers run hours behind because the machinery could not handle the tremendous volume of trading. In a flash, stock prices declined by 25%. By 1932, stocks worth only about 20% of their value

in the summer of 1929. Took a long time for things to recover. The stock market crash of 1929 was not the sole cause of the Great Depression, but it did act to accelerate a global economic collapse greatly. By 1933, nearly half of America's banks had failed and unemployment was approaching 15 million people or 30% of the workforce. The world panicked. Under the weight of the oncoming depression, the Australian economy collapsed with unemployment reaching even further, a peak of 32% in 1932. It's so bad. The worst the US unemployment rate got during 2020 in the midst of a pandemic, 14.8%. Australia got hit hard. Wheat and sheep prices plummeted. Hard days for Aussie farmers. The government promised subsidies for their wheat, but those subsidies never came because the government was

as broke as the fucking farmers. And then the goddamn emu showed up. Let's reset a bit now. We're in 1932. We have a bunch of Aussie World War I vets trying to farm out a living in shitty land in the middle of a global economic depression. The view from their back porch looks like a scene straight out of Jurassic Park. In 1932, a mob of approximately 20,000 emus shows up in Western Australia. They sniffed out that wheat. Previously, the farmers could go out with

their guns and hunt the birds in that bounty system, collecting their carcasses for cash. But now there was just too many emus, too many for them to shoot. They couldn't afford all of the bullets. And it was very hard to shoot these emus because they found out these emus are real tough. They're fast. They're alert. They're A, hard to shoot. You often lose a lot of bullets before you hit one. They're moving around. B, when you did hit one of these tough fuckers, they wouldn't just go down.

They would often have to be shot five, six, seven, eight times before they could be killed. Badass little emus. You call that a bullet? That ain't a bullet, mate. Bugger off, you silly cunts. They be my weight and pace. Some farmers tried putting up fences,

but the giant calf-muscled birds just fucking NBA jammed that shit. Either hopped over, slammed into the fences, broke them, started eating all that sweet wheat inside, and then making things even worse, and I found this hilarious,

those fences were also put up to keep out rabbits. And then once the emus knocked down the fences, the rabbits were like, fuck yeah, bro. They just Peter Cottontailed their little bunny asses inside of the farms and just ate whatever scraps the emus didn't eat. Seeing how sturdy these birds were, how well they could take a bullet from hunting rifles, just keep running these farmers, these World War I vets, they knew they needed bigger guns, guns they didn't have. So they called upon the Australian military to help them out. They wanted some Lewis automatic rifle machine guns, widely used by British troops in World War I. This motherfucker is devastating. It would be used all the way through the Korean War. In both World War I and II,

the Lewis automatic used as the machine gun on aircrafts, the serious gun. The Lewis gun was gas operated, could fire 500 to 600 rounds a minute. They had a maximum distance of 3,500 yards and an effective range of 880 yards. Use a top mounted pan magazine. They held 47 or 97 rounds. This is the gun they would bring to the EMU. Holy shit. Fuck bringing a gun to a knife fight. They were bringing an atomic bomb to a thumb wrestling match. To discuss their violent solution to the emu problem, a group of ex-soldiers met with not the head of the agricultural department,

not an expert on emus, but the minister of defense, Sir George Pierce. He's an interesting guy. Sir George Foster Pierce was born on January 14th, 1870, at Mount Barker, South Australia. Fifth of 11 children of English parents, James Pierce Blacksmith and his wife, Jane. His name wasn't Blacksmith. He wasn't Blacksmith. Pierce was educated at Red Hill Public School, but left at age 11. He started doing some farm work, which he found hard and unpleasant. Yeah, pretty sure that's how all 11-year-olds probably

find farm work. He soon left home, became a carpenter in Adelaide, capital of South Australia. But after losing work in the Depression of 1891, he moved to Perth, where he found a job doing more carpenter work. He joined a union, the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners. That's kind of a hoity-toity little union name there, which would lead to political activism and to a long career in politics. By 1893, Pierce was an active member of the Trades and Labor Council and its Progressive Political League. By 1900, he was elected to the Senate, went on to hold a variety of positions, including Minister of Defense. He began his career in the Labor Party. He joined the National Labor Party, the Nationalist Party, and the United Australia Party. And he served as a cabinet minister under prime ministers from all four parties. He was Australia's minister of defense

a bunch of times, from 1908 to 1909, then again from 1910 to 1913, then from 1914 to 1921, then from 1932 to 1934. He's a career politician. He's 24 years in the Aussie cabinet, 37 years as an Aussie senator, both still records. Interestingly, pretty anti-military in his younger years. When Pierce first entered the Senate, he was skeptical of militarism. Militarism, especially in the form of a standing army, he believed would impede social reform. But then, when Russia was defeated by Japan in 1905, Pierce changed his tune. On the issue of compulsory training, he thought that Australia was in danger of being attacked I love that.

We don't need a military. Cue to sudden threat of being attacked by someone else's military. Hey, what the fuck? Why the fuck do we not have a military? One of the many reasons I'm so supportive of the military, why we here at Bad Magic Productions donate to the military is because when you need them, you really, really need them. Pierce went on to believe that compulsory education and military service were actually very compatible with and essential to democracy. These things implied equality of sacrifice, right? That you couldn't claim to live in a democracy and have your voice heard along

with everyone else's if you weren't willing to make similar sacrifices to everyone else. I do love that thought there. And I got to say, reading that makes me honestly feel guilty. I wish someone would have forced my young crazy ass into some military service for like a year or two. I wonder how much together we would all be as a culture, how much less polarized if we all had to serve together a few years, if we all had to sacrifice the same that way. less polarized if we all had to serve together a few years, if we all had to sacrifice the same that way. Easy for me to say now, I guess, right? But it is a regret of mine. Anyway, as Minister of Defense, Pierce excelled in initiating and overseeing the highly complex arrangements designed to create a standing fighting force of 127,000 men by 1920. He figured out new purchasing

procedures, new forms of education for soldiers and officers, negotiated with Britain on naval matters. He was shy and mustachioed. It's a great word. Mustachioed. How did he look? He was mustachioed. He had expressive brown eyes, valued calmness and orderliness. He was, by many accounts, a solid dude who inspired confidence.

Most importantly, he was ready to pay more than lip service to his stated principles. He was the man these Western Australian farmers needed to fuck up those emus. These ex-soldiers knew they needed machine guns to save their farms and the agricultural department. Sure as shit didn't have them. When Pierce was informed of the situation and heard about their request, he said, sure, you know, fuck it. Why not? He said something like that. But there were conditions.

He couldn't justify giving civilian veterans guns that had literally been used on aircrafts. Pierce's first stipulation was that only active military personnel would be using the machine guns. Seems reasonable. He agreed to have the Western Australian government finance transport for troops, but stipulated that the farmers would have to provide food,

accommodation, and ammunition. And that seems a little shitty, but remember, the farmers aren't the only ones hurting right now. The government also kind of broke. Pierce also apparently was supportive of the idea to kill emus en masse because the birds provided good target practice. I know that sounds cold, but you know,

not wrong. It's not like they could have gotten away with just using dudes to get gunners used to hitting moving targets. You know, Jimmy, that'd be a dickhead. Put these middle trash bin over your head and run around. Hit the boys, fire off some rounds. I don't know where that accent went there at the end.

Authorizing the machine gun of emus may have also been a political move on Pierce's part. At the time, Western Australia wanted to secede from the Australian Federation. Pierce thought by helping the struggling Western Australian farmers, he could win over some hearts and minds in the region that would then support him and support remaining part of the nation.

And secessionism, still a hot debate topic in Western Australia today. A poll run in October of 2020 found that 28% of Western Australians support Western Australia getting the fuck out, leaving the Australian Federation. The slaughter of thousands of emus was a good PR opportunity for Pierce, he thought, to help with publicity. Pierce hired a cinematographer from Fox, Fox Movietone, a newsreel that ran from 1928 to 1964. It's a documented all. He wanted visual proof of this great victory

he was going to help these farmers achieve. After he hired the cinematographer, the media got wind of this story and immediately started making jokes. Of course they did. He sent in the machine gunners to take out EMU. By October of 1932, it was time for military action. The EMUs had to be stopped.

The Special EMU Task Force would fall under the command of Major G.P.W. Meredith, the 7th Heavy Battery of the Royal Australian Artillery. There isn't much info on him out there, other than having a fucking sweet-ass name. Major Meredith. Commanded Soldier Sergeant S. McMurray. And Gunner J. O'Halloran. And that was it. Three professional soldiers and a camera guy.

Plus 10,000 rounds of ammunition and two Lewis guns. A picture of a general. Wishing them all just good luck. Alright, mates. Today's the day we make history. It's gonna be scary. There's 20,000 of them. Only three of General. All right, wishing them all just good luck. All right, mates. Today's the day we make history. It's going to be scary. There's 20,000 of them, only three of us. It's important we don't flash anything shiny at these bastards.

Put some tape over your belt buckles. Take off your rings and watches unless you want to die today. Larry, today is not the day to debut that new sequined jacket. Last thing, do not aim for their heads. They are quite tiny. And they bob around in their long, creepy necks with no real rhyme or reason. Last thing, do not aim for their heads. They are quite tiny, and they bob around on their long, creepy necks with no real rhyme or reason. Godspeed, gentlemen. Godspeed. In hindsight, I'm sure they wish they had sent in a lot more troops. Not that even more troops would have

assured victory. These emus are a crafty bunch. On November 1st, 1932, the emu hunters, ready to go, but then their operation is delayed because of heavy rainfall that caused the emu hunters ready to go, but then their operation is delayed because of heavy rainfall that caused the emu to scatter over a wider area. Delay of game. With the heavy rains coming to an end the following day, November 2nd, the trio plus the cameraman give the mission its official start.

According to one newspaper account, they were tasked to collect 100 emu skins. The emu's feathers would be used to make some ceremonial hats. They're gonna, you know, it's gonna be a great day. Sounds easy enough. They're feeling pretty optimistic. They're going to, you know, it's going to be a great day. Sounds easy enough. They're feeling pretty optimistic.

They're making plans for what they're going to do with these dead emu once they have them. They're going to cook up some nice steaks. Men travel to Campion, that veteran-built town site in the Wheatbelt region of Western Australia we mentioned earlier. All right, that very rural area. The closest actual town to Campion is Muchenbuden, population 281. And soon the men in this area, they come upon a mob of around 50 emu. And these emu, not fucking about. They had butterfly knives, okay?

They wore matching bandanas, leather jackets. These were rough emu. Some of them had tattoos. A lot of them had earrings. Most of them smoked. A couple cursed. A few seemed drunk. A couple were carrying 38 specials.

They slicked back their little head weird kind of fluffy fur shit with grease. They had chains connected to their wallets. This wasn't a mob of emus. It was a fucking gang. And they weren't going down without a fight. God, I wish that was true. Now, when the soldiers showed up, they just looked, the emus just kind of looked at them for a second and then went back to munch on their wheat

with their tiny little bird heads. Along with the three soldiers and the cameraman were a group of local settlers who were interested in seeing how this is all going to play out. This fight had an audience. I pictured dudes with cans of Fosters in their hands, big foam fingers.

Who are we? A-I-F. Who are we? A-I-F. You know, it's kind of like rugby cheers. Instead of the battle of campions about to begin, the like rugby cheers and stuff. The battle of Campion's about to begin. The two gunners open fire. The first attack of the war fizzles out

as the birds run off a bit and are too far away to shoot. They're real fast. The guys, you know, are like, oh, shit. We didn't really think about them running away. I was just kind of thinking they were just going to stand perfectly still and just let us shoot at them. That'd be so much easier. They have to fucking get their heavy guns and have to go regroup.

And the settlers come and, you know, I picture them carrying like bleachers. They watch this next little spot. And the settlers try and help them out. They try to kind of like,

you know, herd the emus into an ambush. But the birds are too smart for that and they split off into a whole bunch of little groups. They run in different directions making for difficult targets. They're not having good luck.

They keep missing them with all their shots. Just, you know, these Aussies. Yeah, fuck me dead. Oi, these flankers. Might more trouble than we thought. Second round of gunfire comes

and a reported number of birds are killed. That number never reported, probably because it was very low. The emus retreat, sort of. Less of a retreat, more of just, you know, running away from gunfire like animals tend to do. Later that day, another smaller mob is spotted.

The soldiers attack and shoot perhaps a dozen, according to quotes given in local newspapers. So they have now killed maybe 20 or so of the roughly 20,000 emus fucking up the farms. They still have a little ways to go to win this war. Confidence already waning a bit. The machine gunners immediately realize these motherfuckers are agile. Really hard to get a clean shot on. Right? You know, the second you open fire, they scatter. And they're really tough.

The emus seemed almost bulletproof. Their thick feathers meant they could take four or five shots from even the Lewis gun before succumbing to their injuries. I imagine the farmers were like, yeah, it's what we've been saying, you fuckwits. Fucking dinosaurs. Two days later, November 4th, 1932,

the Battle of the Dam is fought, and the emus get some revenge, kind of. Maybe stretching that word. Major Meredith has established an ambush spot near a local dam. And that morning, more than a thousand emus are spotted heading towards the soldiers' position. Picture them, leather jackets jackets. Bandanas.

Cigarettes. Dangling out of their tiny beaks. Earrings dangling from, I don't know, because they don't have outward ears. Maybe just kind of pinned to the side of their little tiny pinheads. Picture switchblades held in their little creepy wings. Maybe a few of them are on motorcycles now. Why not? Picture it.

With some experience under their belts, the gunners waited until the dino birds were closed before firing. Then the fucking gun, they only had one this day, it jammed. After they killed about a dozen birds, the rest of the birds then scatter off, and the soldiers will not see them for the rest of the day. So maybe not revenge per se, but the emus certainly did not get massacred as planned. The media eats this up. The war's getting funnier. One newspaper wrote, the emu have proved that they are not so stupid as they are usually considered to be.

Each mob has its leader. This is actually a quote too. They're just messing around here. Each mob has its leader, always an enormous black plumed bird standing fully six feet high, who keeps watch while his fellows busy themselves with the wheat.

At the first suspicious sign, he gives a signal and dozens of heads stretch up out of the crop. A few birds will take flight, Now, I don't know if they really thought these birds had little leaders in their mobs. I couldn't find other information to really back that up. I think they were just having a laugh at all this. I bet some Aussies were eating this shit up reading this, but not the farmers, probably not the farmers, but you know, everyone else. They've been fed a steady diet of negative news for the past two decades. World War I, pandemic, global depression. Now they get to read about a silly emu war. Over the next few days, Meredith and his merry men travel south. Locals report that the emu in this next area they head to, more tame, stand still a little bit more, easier to shoot.

The trio and their cameraman hope for more success, and they will not find it. Frustrated, Meredith gets creative with his EMU machine gunning tactics and mounts one of the guns on the roof of a truck. And this does not work well at all. The roads are very rough, and these trucks are only able to go about 15, 20 miles per hour on these roads, right? The emu, they're running away up to 31 miles per hour, so the birds can just easily outrun these trucks. And the gunner has a real hard time keeping his balance, you know, on this bouncy, you know, fucking dirt road. You know, he can't fire a

shot, you know, when the emu is in shooting distance because he's bouncing all around. You know, he can't fire a shot, you know, when the emu is in shooting distance because he's bouncing all around. And then even if they somehow miraculously do get up next to one emu, it's only one, the rest have scattered. They would have needed hundreds of trucks to mount a proper attack, and that still wouldn't have worked very well. I just keep picturing the old Benny Hill theme song playing around while they're doing this. Just chaos. You know, the gunners bounce around in the back of the truck, yelling, come on, it's over there! And then Meredith's yelling at the gunner,

no, he's out of the suit over there! He's out of the suit over there! Spotter looking through binoculars to find the emu, and then one stands up, you know, right next to him, just kind of like laughs, you know, meep, meep. Just runs off like the roadrunner, getting chased by Wiley Cody, just pandemonium. I love that song.

The truck experiment would end badly. To put it mildly, an emu, they get one emu, but not shooting it. They run it over. And then it gets tangled in the truck's steering equipment and unable to steer. They crash into someone's fucking fence and they destroy a huge section of fence. The fence was there to keep emu out. The vehicle gets badly damaged. Some say the truck was completely wrecked. It's a disaster. While examining the body, they discover that the bird they run over was still running at full speed before they hit it with five slugs in its body from this Lewis gun. These are tough birds. November 8th, not yet a week into the Great Emu War, the men do some math to see how their initial efforts have fared.

It's not good. They tally that 2,500 rounds have been fired, 25% of their allotted total. With 2,500 rounds, they've estimated they have killed something like 50 birds. The settlers were more generous, estimated the expedition had killed around 200 to maybe even 500 emu.

But even 500, it's not good. There were still roughly 20,000 emu running around, eating up that sweet wheat, right? More keep showing up. They have not helped the situation at all. Meredith did note in his report that his side took no casualties. Funny. That's something at least.

One critic and ornithologist named Dominic Serventi said, The machine gunner's dreams of point-blank fire into serried masses of emu were soon dissipated. The emu command had evidently ordered guerrilla tactics, and its unwieldy army soon split up into innumerable small units that made use of the military equipment uneconomic. A crestfallen field force therefore withdrew from the combat area after about a month. When one new South Wales state labor politician inquired if the soldiers deserved a medal for participating in this war. A politician in Western Australia replied that the medal should go to the emu who had won every round so far.

This was not the PR dream Pierce had envisioned. It was a nightmare. His plan was not saving anyone's farm. It was making him a laughingstock. Also on November 8th, members in the Australian House of Representatives discussed the merits of this operation. The media had been pretty merciless. The bad press weighed heavily on the minds of the representatives, and they voted to take away the machine guns that very day. Meredith would make some interesting observations about this whole event later.

Years later, in an interview with the Sun-Herald, Meredith said, If we had a military division with the bullet-carrying capacity of these birds, it would face any army in the world. They can face machine guns with the invulnerability of tanks. They are like Zulus whom even dum-dum bullets could not stop. The emu had won. They celebrate by ruining more fences

and sharing more wheat with their little rabbit dickhead buddies. Making all this more of a disaster, the farmers note that that November, the weather's warmer than usual and it had worsened the drought they were experiencing. And the drought brought more emu migrating over looking for food. These poor bastards following the initial battles.

There were now more emu in Western Australia than ever before. The farmers again turned to the government for more assistance. This time they recruit James Mitchell, the premier of Western Australia, who gave his strong support for renewing military assistance. This guy was basically for US suckers like Western Australia's governor. It's kind of the closest position. He was given a report that said the initial EMU war battles had resulted in 300 dead EMU. And for some reason that was deemed enough of a win for him to endorse continuing the war. Doesn't sound like a good number to me. He got Pierce on board, who once again approved the request, and the second wave of the EMU war began, November 12th, 1932. In the second round of negotiations, the military agrees to lend more

machine guns to the Western Australian government, expecting that the Western Australian government will provide experienced people to shoot them. But there weren't many experienced machine gunners in the area. So Major Meredith, again, put on the front lines. Meredith and his two men, back in action. I don't know why they thought it was going to work a second time. They're trying the exact same thing. Basically, a few locals are added to the team, but November 13th, the team

is back on the battlefield. In the first two days, they gun down around 40 birds. At this rate, in two months, there will only be 19,000 wheat-eating emus in the area instead of 20,000. Unless more show up, of course, which they probably will. On the third day of their second mission, November 15th, the team doesn't kill any birds. So at this new rate, they could spend the rest of their fucking lives hunting emus with machine guns and never fix this

problem at all or reduce their numbers. This is not going well. On various battles over the next month, they will take down an average of about 100 emu per week. Now back up to the rate of being able to reduce the overall emu numbers by 25% a year, if they hunt them every single day. But then, you know, more will be born. So I don't know. It's not going well. November, or excuse me, December 10th,

Meredith is called back to Parliament to present some more math. In his new report, Meredith claims he and his men have made 986 total kills. They have fired 9,860 rounds. Though they had done better this time than the first, it's still a rate of 10 rounds to every confirmed kill. No one's happy with this ratio. They couldn't afford to keep using ammo at that rate. Meredith then claimed that including the wounded birds that had probably died as a result of injuries, maybe they killed like 2,500

emus. They're totally just guessing. It sounds better, but not good enough. Meredith is removed from the mission. The media continue to find all this hilarious. By December of 1932, word of the Great Emu War had left Australia and spread around the world, reached the UK. Animal rights activists there not amused. Some protested the culling, saying it was tantamount to extermination of the rare emu, which was bullshit. It's not true. There were still so, so many. They were not rare at all.

Easy for those conservationists. Their farms weren't getting fucked over. Some people in Australia weren't happy with any of this either. Dominic Cerventi, that ornithologist we met, and Hubert Whittle, another eminent Australian ornithologist, a.k.a. bird scientist, described the war as an attempt at the mass destruction of the birds.

Which is true. You know, it was. It was an attempt. Was it a justified mass destruction? I don't know. Depends on how you view it. If you believe man should be in charge of nature, it was, it was an attempt. Was it a justified mass destruction? I don't know. It depends on how you view it. If you believe man should be in charge of nature, then yeah, probably justified. If you believe man should just bend to nature's will,

right, take what man's given, then I guess not justified. Two years later, 1934, the Western Australia farmers request assistance from the military again. This time, wary of the whooping the government took in the press before, the military do not help out. As part of their request, this time, in the whooping the government took in the press before the military do not help out. As part of their request,

this time, in addition to machine guns, the farmer literally asked for bombs. Or excuse me, the farmers literally asked for bombs. Oh my God. Seriously, they asked if some bombs could be dropped on the Hebrews from low-flying planes.

I love that. It's so funny to me. All right, Gen Zinwick, I accept that. What about bombs? Let's bomb these dickheads. Come on. Hey, that'd be some kind of wombat fuckstick. Let's bomb us some fucking birds. Unsurprisingly, yeah, request not granted. The bounty system of getting rid of the emu is then put back in place, meaning that it was up to the ex-soldier farmers to cull these creatures themselves. And they did do a pretty good job of this. There were reported 57,034 bounties claimed

over a six-month period in 1934. Way more successful than government efforts. And now, if you're worried that they were exterminating these emus, do not worry. It's so crazy how many of these emus there were. They've been having some real good mating seasons apparently. And despite this very high number of kills, the emu population of Western Australia continued to grow after all those kills. In 1943, the farmers yet again ask for assistance from the government. Again, the government decides to not step in, still getting their crops fucked up by emus. The farmers request government assistance yet again in 1948, denied again. Finally, the farmers get more help in November of 1950. Hugh Leslie raises the issue of emus in parliament,

urges Army Minister Josiah Francis to give some 303 ammunition from the military to the farmers. The minister approves the release of 500,000 rounds of ammo. Since the 50s, there have been many other attempts to shoot or poison large numbers of emu, and the resilient birds continue to thrive. In the end, what finally changed the game for human-emu relations was stronger, better, more affordable fences. As

quality increased and prices decreased, more farmers were able to afford fences that did not fall down when emus battered them. So I guess it is true that good fences make good neighbors. Finally, emus and farmers could coexist. No more machine guns. And wild emus now have a stable population of around 700,000 adults in Australia. And some farmers like them around now. Some farmers see the birds as beneficial because they eat the birds that tangle in their sheep's wool,

as well as caterpillars and grasshoppers that munch on their crops. They can control with their fences now when the emus, you know, can come into their land. The emu war over. The Great Emu War. Now let's hop out of this timeline and take a quick look at some other contentious relationships. I find this next little section fascinating between Australians and some other beastly neighbors

before wrapping things up today. Good job, soldier. You've made it back. Barely. As more Europeans moved to Australia in the late 19th century after a gold rush, right, that gold rush, they ran into more and more problems with local wildlife. It wasn't just emus.

They also brought in some non-native creatures that flourished to the point of destroying ecological systems and changing the country slash continent forever. From rabbits introduced for sport to wild camels that had to be culled via helicopter, Australia has experienced a number of animal disasters. Let's first talk about rabbits,

then cats, then brumbies. Start with the bunnies. For more than 150 years, Australia has been plagued by rabbits. I'm going to throw some crazy numbers at you. Specifically, non-native European imported rabbits. First introduced by an English settler

as targets for casual hunting in 1859, the European rabbit population exploded to an estimated 10 billion bunnies. Contributing to so many rabbits. Contributing, that's so many rabbits. Contributing to extensive environmental damage and the extinction of some native species. These fucking rabbits. They got rid of some other species.

Have you ever heard the phrase fuck like rabbits? It doesn't come from nowhere. Check out these rabbit mating stats here. Some rabbits can get pregnant at just four months old and they're fertile all but about three days a month, you know, fertile for all the days of a month, except for three days. I don't know if I said that correctly. The gestation period for a rabbit is roughly only 30 days. They can breed again nearly immediately after birth. So that means that, you know, technically

a rabbit can have 11 or 12 litters a year. The average litter size is five, but it can be as high as 12 rabbits per litter. One female rabbit could theoretically kick out over, you know, 50, wait, 50 rabbits a year. Is that right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, well over, like 50 to 100. And since these rabbits have, they live about nine years, one female rabbit could have over 500 other rabbits in its life. Now, does that happen?

I'm not sure one rabbit has ever had like 500 rabbits, but I bet a lot of rabbits have had over 100 rabbits. That's so many rabbits. Over the past century, biologists tried and largely failed to stop the rabbits from destroying Australia with fences, poisons, mass hunting. None of that worked. They had to use biological warfare to reduce their numbers. Accidental biological warfare. Scientists unintentionally released a virus deadly to rabbits in 1995. Government researchers were experimenting with the rabbit hemorrhagic disease virus, RHDV, on Wardang Island off South Australia's coast, and then some renegade flies picked up this pathogen, transported it to

the mainland. Luckily, this containment failure became a smashing success. The virus eradicated an estimated 60% of Australia's rabbits, acting with particular lethality in arid areas. Since 1995, it's brought down the bunny population a lot and allowed some other endangered native mammals to recover, according to a 2016 study in the journal Conservation Biology. Despite the reduction in numbers, bunnies constantly fucking bunnies remains a problem. There are an estimated 150 million feral non-native rabbits in Australia today. If only that guy hadn't decided

he needed something fuzzy to shoot at back in 1859. Feral cats, also a big problem in Australia. A real big problem. British colonists brought domestic cats as pets to Australia about 200 years ago. Australia was one of two continents, the other being Antarctica, that was catless. So, you know, other Australian animals not used to cats. Fast forward 200 years, Australia bursting at the seams with kitties.

So many cats. Only so many sticks, mother. In one study, it was reported that 99.8% of the land in Australia has feral cats running around on it. That's quite a bit of the land, 99.8%. Another study, which was compiled by dozens of the country's top environmental scientists from numerous other studies across the outback, estimated that there are up to 5.6 million feral cats roaming Australia's countryside. 5.6 million, significantly less than those 10 billion rabbits, but still a crazy number. And it's a problem.

Cats are one of nature's most prolific killers. And it's estimated that all those feral cats kill 75 million native animals every night across Australia, including birds, frogs, small mammals, you know, reptiles. The cats have been blamed for the extinction of about 20 Australian species, ranging from small ground dwelling birds to medium-sized mammals. Mammals with names like Bilby, Bandicoot, Batong, Numbat. None of those names are made up. Those are awesome animal names.

Feral cats threaten the survival of over 100 native species today. It's a real problem. All this has led to a sequel of sorts to the Great Emu War, but this time starring cats. I know, sad for a lot of people. You can probably imagine PETA not happy about this at all. Back in 2015, the Australian government announced that it intended to kill more than 2 million feral cats

by 2020 through shooting, trapping, and poisoning. The culling is ongoing. Bojangles right now laughing so hard. Sorry, cat lovers. Our canine mascot, not real sensitive when it comes to cats. If you didn't like hearing about killing bunnies

and cute kitties, you're probably not going to like this either. This is Brumby section. Along with bunny and kitty mass murder, Australia is home to Brumby shooting.

Brumby shooting is simply shooting with the intent to eradicate feral horses called Brumbies in Australia. It's been done since the 1800s. It's still a thing. There's always petitions against it. Brumby shooting was a booming industry from the 1870s to the mid 1890s. It had such a deep impact on culture. It was often

the subject of songs, works of literature, as well as a popular sporting pastime. There are legit arguments for Brumby shooting. It's estimated there are over a million feral horses in Australia. So many horses. Ranchers need grazing land, water for domestic herds. Their herds can't compete with Brumby's if the numbers get too big. The horses also damage the environment, spread disease. You know, there's a lot of people. I saw this, I've read this interview with this Aboriginal activist

who's like, oh, they're fucking destroying this sacred land of ours. Like there's so many horses. If their numbers aren't cold, other species will go extinct. Now these horses didn't just fall out of the sky. They were brought to the land down under. Horses first imported into Australia in 1788 as work animals.

By 1800, about 200 horses had made their way to Australia. These badass horses survived a long trip to get there. They were hardy, resilient creatures, and from 1820 or from 1820 to 1860, the badass horse population in Australia increased a hundredfold. From 3,969

to 431,525. Horses love to fuck. Some of them escaped, bred in the wild, created a massive population of wild horses. By the 1850s, there were wild horses in every district in the colony. By 1860, at least 100,000 wild horses were reported in New South Wales alone. By June of 1865, the New South Wales Impounding Act was approved, giving authority for landholders and squatters to destroy

unbranded horses or cattle on their land. Brumbies that were eating up all the food they needed for their livestock. This led to a new profession, professional Brumby shooters. Need those horses gone from your land? Pay someone to shoot them. Newspaper reports from the 1870s described the difficult lives of professional Brumby shooters, carrying out unpleasant work from dawn to dusk with few material comforts and inadequate pay just out there in the outback oftentimes. In the first half of 1871 alone, over 1,500 Brumbies are killed. In 1927, the Western Star and Roma Advertiser reported that a single shooter killed 2,000 Brumbies in a single season at one shilling each. One group of hunters claimed they collected 25,000 horse hides over a few years. And the Brumbies continue to be killed or culled today.

Some Aussies disgusted by this. Some wish more were killed. Emus, cats, bunnies, wild horses, just four of many creatures, Aussies continue to debate the ethics of going to war against. Australia has also had problems with feral donkeys, feral pigs, feral goats, feral toads, feral water buffaloes, even feral donkeys, feral pigs, feral goats, feral toads, feral water buffaloes, even feral camels. The Great Emu War. What a weird story. Before we recap it, call it a day, one more sponsor. Sorry about that. Today's Time Suck is brought to you by Machine Gun Nettie's Emu Cat Rabbit and Brumby Buffet Shack.

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It's us or them, mates. Us or them. Oi! Sorry about that. That felt insensitive. But you know, Nettie pays well. He pays well, and I've been to the buffet. Ethics aside, it's fucking delicious.

Anyway, the Great Emu War. Not really a war, of course. War, just an interesting way to frame the struggle between veterans of World War I who just wanted to eke out a living in Western Australia's plains and the emus that wanted to eat all their crops. I imagine this suck will make a fair amount of meat sacks sad. As an animal lover, I do get it. I don't like to think about my little fur babies, Penny and Ginger, right? Being hunted or killed, being culled, of course not. But if there were millions or billions of doodles wreaking havoc on the environment, A, pretty fucking funny. It's a pretty funny picture. But if they were causing other animals to go extinct,

I would not oppose their culling. I'd be sad, sure. Doodles being slaughtered, my God. That's like Care Bears being murdered. Super fucking sad. But I would understand the logic. You know, if thousands of them were ruining farmers' lives and livelihoods,

I would understand that something needed to be done. If they were eating all the food that, I don't know, what else is super cute? If they were eating all the food that, I don't know, what else is super cute? If they were eating all the food that koala bears needed to live. If it was like a, some doodles die and all koala bears get to live. Or, you know, if we don't kill some doodles, all the koala bears die. Then yeah, I guess some doodles have to die. Sorry, Gigi, you have to go. Penny pooper stays. You have to go. Your breath stinks. Tough choices have to be made. But seriously, I accept that life is just brutal in some ways. Don't like that, but I accept it.

Nature is brutal. That's what I kept thinking about with this. Anyone who's really, really against hunting, okay, I understand the emotion behind that belief. But for me, when I think about hunting or culling or whatever, I just think about like that fucking cheetah. Eating that impala's ass. Literally ate its whole ass. Such a brutal scene. And one of many. That shit happens every day in nature, probably every minute, every second. You can't stop it. What we can do is try to manage game as best we can, you know, be good stewards of the land, kill as efficiently and ethically as possible. And I think that's as good as it gets. Sometimes I think we forget that we're just animals too.

And if it's okay, you know, for Chester Cheetah to eat that ass, then it's okay for us meat sacks, right? To do the same or some, you know, maybe some version that maybe not just eat the ass, you get it. We're just animals. Time now for today's top five takeaways. Time shock, top five takeaways. Number one, the World War I vets turned farmers,

had such a problem with the thousands of living dinosaurs fucking up their livelihoods that they turned to Australia's minister of war and asked for machine guns to take on those emus. And they got some. Number two, the Australian media at the time had fun with that story. Of course, they did the absurdity of all of it

made for a number of fun war stories. People needed some silly news. After World War I, the Spanish flu and the Great Depression and the Great Emu War gave it to them. Number three, Australia waged war on their own national bird. The bird on their national crest.

Watch your asses, bald eagles. Don't think we won't come for you. You crossed the wrong line. Number four, the Western Australian farmers got so frustrated with emus destroying their crops, they eventually asked the government if they could use low-flying planes to drop bombs on emus.

And you know what? I thought about not saying this because I know it's messed up, but part of me wishes that would have happened because that's so fucking funny to me because they're literally bombing emus. They were denied, which is probably for the best. Number five, new info.

And looking into the emu, it was referenced a few times that the emu has a tiny brain. Birds in general, definitely not thought to be big thinkers. Hence the expression, someone having a bird brain, you know, pejorative, negative.

But although their brain is indeed small, an emu's brain accounts for 0.06% of its body mass, whereas a human's is 2% of its body mass. It is also packed full of useful instincts and information, and it's very dense. Birds in general actually have very efficient minds. Some birds are capable of using tools, recognizing themselves in the mirror, saving food for future use. How is that possible? A study published on June 13th, 2016, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, tried to figure it out. Researchers counted the number of neurons in 28 bird species, dissecting the brain,

coloring neurons with a dye so they could count how many there were. For comparison, they found that humans placed at number one with 86 billion neurons in the brain, while the next closest was the baboon with 10 billion. Pig has just over 2 billion. QAnon supporter has about seven. Come on, guys, dang. Emus have 1.34 billion. Not a lot, but in terms of relative size, it's huge. Most birds pack in way more neurons per gram of brain tissue than other animals. When you rank animals by the density of neurons in the brain, how many neurons per gram of brain, gold crests, starlings, and blackbirds top the charts. So the term bird brain really isn't all that insulting.

Those brains are actually pretty efficient and impressive little balls of thinking meat. Time shock, top five takeaways. The great emu war has been sucked. I hope I did it justice. I hope my accent was tolerable. I did try. I did.

I did try to learn a few Australian accent things. It was very fun to do. It was a fun topic. Nice little change of pace. Thank you to the Bad Magic Productions team for the help in making time sick every week. Queen of Bad Magic, Lindsay Cummins. Reverend Dr. Joe Paisley.

The Script Keeper, Zach Flannery. Sophie the Fact Sorceress Evans. Bid Elixir. Logan. Art Warlock. Keith. Running badmagicmerch.com. Liz Hernandez on the socials. And again, the new improved customer service email for merch is store at badmagicmerch.com. Liz Hernandez on the socials.

And again, the new improved customer service email for merch is store at badmagicproductions.com. I think I've been saying that for a couple of months, so I should probably stop saying new and improved. It's been the same for a little while. Thanks to all those who've joined the Cult of the Curious private Facebook group. Almost 26,000 members now. Thanks to Liz Hernandez for all seeing eyes running the Cult of the Curious Facebook page. Thanks to Beefsteak and the Mod Squad on Discord. Thanks to the Space Sisters playing Time Suck trivia on the Time Suck app.

Bodhi210, currently the round eight leader, 4,151 points. Good luck to you and everyone else. Next week on Time Suck, we take, you know, a very different path again. We get controversial. We dig into Blackwater, the private military company and its founder, Eric Prince. Blackwater began in 1997. The brainchild of former Navy SEAL, Eric Prince of the ultra wealthy Prince family started out as a private security firm providing training support to law enforcement. Then it would become a behemoth. Their first contract

in Iraq was in the summer of 2003 when they secured a $21 million contract for personal security detachment. In Iraq and Afghanistan, Blackwater, one of several private security companies used to guard officials, security guards, and military installations, trained the Iraqi army and police forces, and provided other support for armed forces. especially after the September 17th, 2007 shooting of 17 Iraqi civilians. That incident would spark national interest in the number of private forces being used in Iraq. Many started to wonder about the legality, the ethics of it all. How were these companies being ran?

By whom? For what purpose? Were they actually helping the military or just trying to turn profits? We dig into the life of Eric Prince and Blackwater next week on Time Suck. I know so little, excited to learn

a whole lot more CERN, CERN? Learn, learn, had that word still in my brain, a whole lot more soon.

That's how words work. Learn with me next week. And now let's head on over to this week's Time Sucker Updates. Updates? Get your Time Sucker updates. First update, Super Sucker Jennifer McKee would like to share an important message. Jennifer writes, Hey Dan and crew, let me start by saying I love Time Suck and scared to death.

I listen to both as I'm writing up my clinical notes while at work. Thank you. There have been a few times coworkers have asked me if I am okay because they can hear me in my office saying, oh, fuck, oh, fuck, oh, fuck. When listening to scared to death, I listen with headphones on so I don't know how loud I'm being.

I'm writing in because I'm not sure if you ever look at the TimeSuck Facebook page, but a lot of spaces are seeming to be struggling with their mental health. Yes, thank you for pointing that out. Maybe I'm just seeing what I want because I'm a psychologist and these posts stand out to me. Anyway, I just had an idea that for a show, you could have some mental health. Yes, thank you for pointing that out. Maybe I'm just seeing what I want because I'm a psychologist and these posts stand out to me. Anyway, I just had an idea that for a

show you could have some mental health professionals discuss therapy options, medications, etc. TimeSuckers could possibly send in questions for the professionals to discuss, answer. Just a thought. So many seem to be struggling. Keep up the good work. Thanks, Jen. Aw, thank you. I appreciate you enjoying the shows and I appreciate you doing what you do. Not sure if a guest episode with mental health professionals is just right for the format of time suck, but I do realize the pandemic has been hard, hard, hard on mental health for millions. What I can do is encourage Meat Sacks to explore a number of new online mental health services, right? The pandemic has made it much easier to get counseling, you know, access to counseling. You can get it at home, which I think is such a good thing. It opens up the possibility of getting treatment to so many more people. One of our sponsors, BetterHelp, you know, fantastic,

but there are other options as well. There's a variety of free options. There are free online support groups, so many. There are so many people in the Cult of the Curious Facebook group that are happy to chat with others, happy to point people towards good places to get help. I do highly encourage anyone really struggling with their mental health just to take a few minutes, Google stuff like online mental health help or just Google mental health help. So much comes up.

Never been easier to access mental health professionals. Take advantage of the times we live in. You know, what do you have to lose, truly? Nimrod wants you to get help. Lucifina thinks being okay with not being okay, sexy as fuck. I definitely, you know, I keep it positive here, but yeah, you know, even like things going well at work,

it's a mind fuck. Just not knowing when, you know, some semblance of what normal felt like before, you know, February, March 2020 felt like it was going to return. It's weird, at the very least. And for many, it's just extremely rough. And we're social creatures, and it's just not good for us to not hug people as much, not shake hands, not be in the same setting. I mean, I understand the science of masks.

I'm in favor of it that way. But also, it's this visual reminder that things are fucked up. That's not good for mental health. So, you know, so take that first step, looking around a little bit. It's definitely hard on all of us, much, much, much harder for some of us.

I think about people in Texas right now, on top of everything else, they've had to deal with this fucking shit storm with all the cold and breaking the pipes and the accidents and the power outages. My God. So, you know, but take that first step. Do some looking around. You know, take a break from sweet asses on Instagram or whatever. You know, push pause on Pornhub.

You can jerk off in five minutes. You can, you know, DJ it out in just a couple minutes and just Google like what's going on, you know, uh, with mental health on the web, find the many resources that are out there. Uh, your life may literally depend on getting that help. So thank you, Jen, for that reminder. Uh, now some words regarding the recent Armenian genocide coming in from Glendale sucker, Rafi, uh, Serafian. Hopefully I'm saying your last name, right? Rafi, uh. Rafi writes, dear almighty sucker, I've been such a huge fan of your standup and time suck since the start. Thank you. This is regarding the Armenian genocide suck. And as an Armenian, I wanted to reach out and

say how amazingly accurate you portrayed that episode. Thank you. Of all the years of listening to time suck, I've never had to take a break before from listening for a day because it was just too much. I mean that in the most sincere way, the way you described every bit of the history and the timeline reminded me of all the stories that my great-grandmother would tell my brother, cousins, and I growing up. She was a survivor of the genocide, and in our household, it was normal growing up to hear all those stories. My great-grandmother would tell us of the horrors, how her parents were slaughtered in front of her when she was six. Then she had to hide in rubble for days, surviving off of eating grass

until some Turkish peasants found her, took her in, ultimately left her at an orphanage. Listening to this week's episode really triggered those memories so vividly of her telling us those stories. It brought me to tears while listening. Not to create a somber message, but the opposite. I've never heard such an accurate depiction and story of my people's tragedy in any other medium until that episode. For that, I would like to say thank you for telling our story, for spreading the word that many have tried for years, protested, marched, and even been, you know, prosecuted and killed just to let the world know that we are still here. This horrible inhumane act happened, but we are still here. I'm proud to call myself a descendant of a survivor of the Armenian genocide. I know

this message went on longer than expected, but to close, I'd like to express a phrase that Armenians like to say all the time, which loosely translated means we are few, but we are Armenian. Thank you for taking the time to read this on or off the air. I appreciate you and the whole TimeSuck team. Praise Bojangles, hail Nimrod, your little space lizard, Rafi, uh, Serafian, Glendale, California. Uh, thank you, Rafi. Uh, glad I did that suck.ian, Glendale, California. Thank you, Rafi. Glad I did that suck. Wish I would have done it earlier. I just, you know, I was one of the many, many ignorant.

I just heard the term. You know, I assumed it wouldn't be nearly as bad as it was because I hadn't heard that much about it. I assumed, honestly, I assumed it must have been exaggerated until I looked into it. I was like, fuck. Yeah, and shame on the Turkish government for doing what is obviously or for not doing, excuse me, what is obviously the right thing and just owning up to it. Just fucking own it.

Shame on the Young Turks YouTube channel as well for not changing their name. It's fucking gross. Hail your great grandma, Rafi. I got to grow up with mine. I felt so lucky to do so. Glad you got to grow up with yours as well. What a blessing to get to hear those stories from her and, you know, all the other stories.

To be connected to her life that way. Now get a petition going in Glendale and pressure a system of a down to make a fucking full-length album. Come on. What are they doing over there? Hail Nimrod, sir. Also next month, we are donating, Rafi,

just so you know, to an organization tied to Armenian genocide awareness. Next up, top shelf sack, Nick Renner got got twice. And now his shame is our amusement. Nick writes, what the fuck, man? You time sucking son of a bitch. You finally got me. I like to pride myself on my wittiness and patience,

not getting sucked into your nonsense. But I was listening to your episode 136, moon landing episode while driving into traffic. It was really slow due to snow. You started talking about the hoverboard. You really had me convinced that they exist and that they just haven't passed safety inspections. I like to pride myself on hearing things out before I respond. So I don't make a fool of myself. He had me convinced. So I picked up my phone and texted my wife. I told her I wanted to get one ASAP.

No matter what it takes. Oh, it's so sad actually. Then right after you said that, you know, you told me you were bullshitting my stomach's sake. I knew I had to text her back and let her know I was wrong. I cursed you the entire text as I wrote. I was wrong to a woman who thrives on those words. After that text, I was already a little aggravated. I had to send that text. And then he started talking about those dogs being used as guinea pigs and me being a dog lover. I

got sick about it and wrote another text to my wife telling her that they use dogs to send into space and trying to get around the, I was wrong text. And then he said, you're lying again. God damn it, man. Do you realize the fuel you're lying again, goddammit, man. Do you realize the fuel you just gave my wife? You got me two times, and two times I had to send her I was wrong text within a two-hour time period. You time suck a son of a bitch. You really put me behind the eight ball on this one. I will never send another text telling someone anything cool.

Till I've heard you all the way out. Take pride, suck master, prophet Nimrod. You've given a woman you've never even met enough ammunition to blow me apart for the next few years. Keep on sucking. Never stop doing what you do. You're a natural born teacher.

The show gets me through a lot of boring snow drives. Nick, thank you, Nick. That cracked me up. Sorry, not sorry. I love that I got you back to back. If I were you, I would be so mad. And if I were you, I probably would have gotten as well. I'm so gullible.

Sounds like your wife loved it as well. Glad you're able to have fun with all this. Glad all this is not just fun for me. Keep on sucking, Nick. I hope I get to you again soon. Next up, super sucker, Brian Williams, coming in with a new update on an old topic. Brian writes, short update on episode 63, the Dyatlov Pass incident. A team of eight unregistered hikers has disappeared. The hikers left on the morning of February 10th this year to visit the site, paid tribute to the original nine victims of the 1959 incident. As of February 17th, no one has been found and the case is still open. Crazy.

It is crazy, Brian. I looked into it quite a bit. I can't figure out how legit this recent disappearance is. I can't find any recent American mainstream press articles on it. Not really. There was a tiny little blurb in Newsweek on February 10th on Newsweek.com, and they reported eight tourists from Moscow who ventured into the Dyatlov Pass in the Ural region had not returned by Wednesday morning as expected.

The source said they were supposed to leave at 8 o'clock this morning, but they have not returned yet, and there is no contact with them. Also, numerous outlets have reported that new research has pointed to an avalanche as the likely culprit behind the original missing hikers. Not sure that satisfies me, you know? But there have been a slew of recent articles About the possibility of this avalanche It doesn't really make sense with the injuries That the original crew that disappeared had

I wonder, has anyone checked under the Denver airport For any of the missing hikers Has anyone looked harder at the artwork To look for clues to the recent missing hikers Can't hurt? No, but I Yeah, that is crazy If they also disappeared

there. I mean, I guess it could be another avalanche. Maybe we'll get a better, stronger update soon about, or maybe it'll just be another mystery. Uh, and finally Cummins law commander, Chris Schwartz, the original, the OG Cummins law term coiner got got again. Let's end on some comedy. Chris writes dear Dan and the bad magic crew. is I, Chris, the OG Cummins Law victim, and the guy who coined the term. I was listening to the latest episode of Is We Dumb? And during the junk mail portion of the episode, I heard about the guy who referred himself

to himself as stupid fucking idiot and his running with Cummins Law. It makes me smile every time there's a victim because it reminds me that in some small way, I was able to contribute to the Bad Magic universe. That same day, you got me again, damn it. And this time it wasn't on TimeSuck or The Secret Suck, or even as we dumb, it was Scared to Death.

That's right, Scared to Death now has a commons law victim. And unfortunately, it was me. Let me explain. I was on my way home, listening to Scared to Death, the episode on Corpsewood Manor. In order to listen to music in my vehicle, I use an FM transmitter to pair with my Bluetooth, which means that when I turn off the vehicle, it does not disconnect to Bluetooth.

The other day I was driving home and my wife called me, asked me to stop at a local grocery store, pick up food for supper. I pulled in the parking lot. And being as I live in a small town, I feel comfortable leaving my vehicle running, especially when it's cold outside and since I was running inside quick. Pause the episode, I did not disconnect the Bluetooth transmitter. I went inside. It was quite evident that it was not going to be a quick trip because everyone in the grandma decided to

stop there at the exact same time. So I popped in my Bluetooth earbuds, continued to listen to the episode. When I got up to the register, my earbuds stopped working, but they were fully charged. I was struggling to get the sound to come out of them. Nothing was working. Just then it was time to cash out, put the buds back into their case, proceeded with my transaction, left the store, walked to my vehicle, which was blocked for immediate view by a big truck, turned the corner of the driver's side of the vehicle, and that's where I was met face-to-face with this Karen who was listening with an ear turned towards my vehicle.

She saw me and immediately demanded to know if that was my vehicle. I replied, yeah, and that is when I noticed your sweet mouth noises being pumped out from my speakers. It was during the time when you were describing the sexual interaction between the couple in the story. She demanded to know what I was listening to and why I was talking about sinful pleasure toys and handcuffs. Her words, not mine. I tried to explain that I was actually a podcast about scary stories, but she didn't believe me. She started to berate me with the cacophony of rants about the youth of today and how impressionable they are. And she claimed that I was listening to some kind of smut audio book.

I tuned most of it out, to be honest. That's when her husband had returned from the store. She finally got in the car, but not before she aimed it. You should be ashamed of yourself. Look at me. Needless to say, you probably won't have another listener with her, but who needs her? Thanks for everything you do and all the work you put into podcasting. Not sorry about the long email.

Three out of five stars. Wouldn't change a thing. Keep up the great work and hail Nimrod. P.S. If it's possible, could I get a sweet nickname like Cummins Law Commander or something? It would mean so much if I got an official nickname from the master sucker himself. Keep on sucking. Chris Schwartz. Chris, as you heard, you are now

the Cummins Law Commander. Thanks for starting what has become the source of so many laughs for all of us. I love the Cummins Law messages. They make me smile. Sometimes they make me laugh until I literally cry. So many uncomfortable situations. Even that one. I just love I love this. They got so angry.

It's like they're little kids around whatever. It's like, come on. You can't handle it. You heard about some handcuffs? You heard about some sex? I hope these messages continue to come for many years. Keep laughing, everyone. You know what?

Keep fucking. That helps with mental health. And get help if you need it. Use the internet for good. Take that step. Why not? Hail Nimrod. Thanks for the messages, everybody.

Next time, suckers. I needed that. We all did. Hope again I did okay with my Aussie term and accent today, Aussie suckers. I read your emails. Emu. I at least got that. Oi!

More Bad Magic Productions content through the week. If you're interested, get some chills with Scared to Death. Late Tuesday nights. Get some laughs with Izzy Dime. Wednesdays at noon Pacific time. Ripper! I don't think anyone says that. If you have to mode in some emus with a machine gun this week,

make sure you have good reason. Probably don't try and do it from the back of a truck. Keep on sucking, you fuckwit. Man, I'm so jealous of Australians. You know? Mostly for a weird reason. You guys, it feels like you guys get to say cunts and no one really gets offended.

Like if I say cunts, like I'm like, hey, you fucking cunt. They'd be like, whoa, whoa, whoa. But in an Australian accent, I'm like, hey, you fucking cunt. It seems kind of friendly. That little inflection, hey, you fucking cunt. You know?

Australian, you could probably say it like holidays. You know, you could be having dinner with the family, Christmas, hey, best potatoes, ah, you fucking cunt. You know, Australian, you can probably say it like holidays. You know, you can be having dinner with the family, Christmas, eh, best potatoes, mom, you fucking cunt.

You know, she's like, ah, here's the potatoes. You know, Thanksgiving, ah, does anyone want that turkey leg,

you fucking cunt, you fucking fuckwit. You're like, ah, you're fine, you can eat it. Ah, what a magical place you live in.

Fucking cunt.