Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - Machetes

Episode Date: January 22, 2024

Alex Schmidt and Katie Goldin explore why machetes are secretly incredibly fascinating.Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources and for this week's bonus episode.Come hang out with us on the new SIF Discord: https://discord.gg/wbR96nsGg5

Machetes! Known for being sharp, famous for being jungly. Nobody thinks much about them, so let's have some fun. Let's find out why machetes are secretly incredibly fascinating. Hey there, folks. Welcome to a whole new podcast episode, a podcast all about why being alive is more interesting than people think it is. My name is Alex Schmidt and I'm not alone. I'm joined by my co-host Katie Golden. Katie, what is your relationship to or opinion of machetes? Are you wearing a wire? Always, but it just feels nice. I don't trust the FBI at all. But yeah. Well, you know, Alex, I like a machete. I've never really used one before. It seems the use of a machete is always waving it wildly over your head and you're usually targeting brush. That is my understanding of it. It is a brush whacking device. Obviously, it can be used as a weapon, but it seems mostly like I'm in

thick brush. I need to move through it. So I just got to keep swinging at stuff. And it does look fun to do, but tiring. So I'm relatively neutral because I get tired easily, but I also like whacking at things. So, you know, I can be sold on the concept. A hundred percent same. Yeah. I think the movies really undersell how weary and uncool you would look after basically doing the yard work of macheting through a large section of a thickly underbrushed area. Like, no thanks. I would look like I had just mowed the lawn and not in a good way, you know? Yeah. I mean, a lot, a lot of pit stains going on. They don't show those. They don't show those in the movies when it's like Vin Diesel or The Rock or maybe, I don't know, one of those guys.

Those are the stars. Yeah. And it's, they're all, where's the pit stains, Hollywood? And it's, they're all, where's the pit stains, Hollywood? My main machete connection I found out in the run-up to this is that my brother has used one. Oh. I didn't know until I talked to him about my week instead of taping a machetes show. I did know that when he was in college, he went on a biological research trip to Ecuador. Okay. And so to get to the research station at one point, they used machetes to cut through

some plants. I hope people know what we're talking about. I learned a lot about machetes. But one thing is that in Anglophone countries, like more British, English-speaking countries, they tend to call them cutlasses. We're talking about a large blade that's mainly for chopping. Right. So that's it. But machetes is one name, cutlasses is another, and it turns out they've had a lot of names over time. It's not quite a sword, but it is definitely bigger than a knife. Yeah, and it's really in such a middle ground that we'll talk about of tool and weapon all at once.

It's really both at the same time, but people tend to buy it for one or the other. You can butter your bread with it or lop off someone's head. Yeah, that's how the rock eats bread. He just machetes the bread. Vin Diesel comes over. He's like, that's normal to me. I do it at home too. We're the two stars. Feels right. You know who else feels right? Paul Garaventa, who suggested this topic. Thank you so much, Paul. Yeah, thank you. And it turned out to be a really interesting read and research and everything else.

And we're going to start off with a quick set of fascinating numbers and statistics about it. This week, that's in a segment called, about it. This week, that's in a segment called, Whoa, this podcast has some stats, dear. And the numbers are all right. On this podcast about machetes, we've got statistics on the knife. We've got statistics On the knife We need to get like a band A backup band Sort of like the Tonight Show If we put together some kind of live in-person show

That would be very exciting To do a big stunt stat song Right Right? We should do that Yeah, I can play a kazoo Give me a slide whistle and a kazoo and I think we got it. And thank you, Hey Kayla, for that stat song. We have a new name for this segment every week.

Please make them as silly and wacky and bad as possible. Submit through Discord or to sifpod at gmail.com. Thank you again, Hey Kayla, for teeing it up for the topic. And this episode, it's mostly numbers and stats. There's some takeaways, but it's rich in numbers. And the first number is 1948, the year 1948. It's the year machetes really came to the U.S. with the Beatles. Yes. Not the Beatles part, but pretty much. This is the year when two entrepreneurs founded a toy company called Wham-O. Wham-O. That I think people have heard of.

I've heard of it. Yeah, they did a lot of toys. Yeah. And I remember a lot of toy commercials where it's like Finster the elephant who poops out balls by Wham-O. Right. It's usually cute and soft. Right. And in the 1950s, you know, Wham-O really takes off. They're selling the hula hoop, the slip and slide, later the hacky sack, later the frisbee. But before all that, at the very beginning of the late 40s, they were primarily a seller of blades and weapons for kids.

They started in blades. A slip and slide is essentially a weapon against children. Yeah, I wasn't allowed to have one. And I think that was wise. Good job, parents. And you could get, when you got a running start, you could go pretty fast. The grass adhesion to the abdomen was painful, but worth it ultimately. Kind of learn about friction.

You learn about friction and drag really well when you get a slip and slide. They do a lot of physics toys, Wham-O, huh? Frisbees, hula hoops, slip and slides. It's basically a textbook in the mightiest science. Machetes, yeah. Machetes, yeah. Because this deserves a mini takeaway number one. Machetes are a former United States children's toy.

And not a mock-up of one like a sharp machete. We're linking an amazing piece from Mental Floss by writer Jake Ross, who does wonderful stuff there. And he runs through a history of Wham-O's least popular ideas. And their first and worst idea was the Jungle Machete product, which we have an advertisement for that we'll link to and everything. It was $2.95, which is a little less than $40 today to get a machete for a child. That's a good price for a machete, it seems like. So this was... Right. So to be clear, machetes were already a thing and Wham-O decided to have a kid's version of a machete. Now, I recently, I do live in Italy and I did see a child version of a Vespa, like a little girl riding like a baby Vespa. It was so cute.

Less cute, the idea of children running around with like baby's first machete. But I think this was from an era where we would just arm children for fun, like give them guns and bows and arrows and tiny nukes, you know, enriched plutonium for children ages zero to 80. For children ages 0 to 80. Yeah, this product, it was sold very proudly in catalogs. And you're right, machetes very much existed. And the sales were based on the idea of you can be like the natives in the other countries. Oof on multiple levels. The ad copy leads with all capitals, UNIVERSAL WEAPON OF THE JUNGLE. And then it says it's used by, quote,

natives in clearing trails and hand-to-hand fighting. And it promises a two-foot-long rugged steel blade that can take, quote, violent abuse. They really were trying to get kids to go swinging deadly machetes around. And the pitch was, you'll feel like, you know, tropical people was the pitch. Yeah. Yeah. So one question is, did anyone die? Well, not that we know of. Also, apparently Wham-O didn't just sell machetes. They sold

throwing daggers, tomahawks, and fencing swords. All children's toys? Yeah, not blunted for any age, especially if it's from a catalog. They don't know who's ordering it. So yeah. But today in today's woke-ified America, lawn darts that just killed a few people get banned. I'm so glad I made lawn darts the bonus show this week. That's the other parallel. It's really what we're talking about. Check it out, folks. I didn't know this. I didn't know that that's what's happening. She didn't know. So, you know. But yeah, I mean, that's great. I think kids should learn how to handle lethal weapons from a young age, because otherwise, when they grow up, how are they going to cut through the dense brush of the suburbs? And Wham-O did stop this.

It seems like mainly because their stuff like hula hoops were a big hit. So why would you also keep making something with huge legal liability and everything? Just move on. Yeah. And they, they did apparently briefly try to become two companies, like one selling the fun stuff and one selling weapons.

And they tried to name the weapon company. Whammo spelled different without an H. Oh, W-A-M-O. Whammo. But, but then they just shut that down. They said, let's move on to making the famous soft toys of the world. Yeah. Although like a spiked hula hoop would have been sick. Right. The real Fury Road tie-in hula hoop. Yeah, there we go. So we'll explore before the 1940s. Obviously, this is an older

thing, but there were kids running around with these in the United States. And that spirit lives on. The next number is August 27th of 2012, this fall of 2012. And that is the date when a man in Florida got arrested for carrying a machete into the Republican National Convention. Well, now, I feel like the RNC is giving mixed messages because they are saying that you have a right to bear arms. And like, what's more of an arms that you could bear than a machete? That was pretty much this guy's argument. And he morally, whether he's morally right or wrong, he was only in one specific way legally wrong. But go ahead. Yeah. I'm going to answer that for you. I feel like maybe you shouldn't

carry a machete around and scare people, but even if you're trying to make a point. But anyways, continue. Yeah, the 2012 Republican National Convention was in Tampa Bay, Florida. If folks don't remember, this is the convention officially selecting Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan as a ticket. Oh, yeah, those guys. This Tampa Bay convention gets a visitor from Tallahassee named Jason T. Wilson attempted to walk into the convention with a large visible machete strapped to his leg. And when approached by police, he told them he did not have to stop and he was allowed to carry whatever he wanted. Second Amendment says I have the right to strap a large machete to my leg.

to my leg. Yeah. And it turns out he was only breaking the law one way, which is that in a temporary situation, the convention space had been designated an event zone under city and state law. And that statute bans all weapons. You can't bring guns, blades, anything. But it's a toy. We've established machetes are children's toys. What are we going to ban next? A Nerf dart? I don't know. I don't understand why he didn't go all out and have a machete strapped to both of his legs for some symmetry. Because then that's like, look, now you're machete man.

Now it's an identity. And I think that's just, you know what I mean? Like if you have so many machetes strapped to you where it's like, I'm almost like a machete mascot, then I almost think that's less threatening because it seems less functional. Yeah. And Florida law is basically completely open except for this one event space thing. And the guy ultimately got charged with violating that and also with resisting arrest. Oh, yeah.

He did not let the officer stop him and had a physical altercation. I don't believe anyone was chopped. He didn't use the machete. Right. He didn't back it up. Right. I mean, again, like it is just a toy. So how are you going to use it in any kind of scenario like that?

I mean, you know, he's making his point, I guess, which is what exactly? Yeah, I think nothing kind of. Okay. Because also under Florida law, even today, there's only some specific restrictions on blades above a certain length and if they're concealed. And if your blade is out in the open, like this guy's was, you don't need a permit, you don't need a license, nobody can stop you from just having it. It's only this specific thing where they said the Republican National Convention is a national security bubble for this period of time.

That's the only reason he couldn't do what he did. Yeah. I mean, I feel like if someone wants to have a machete in the privacy of their own home, their own bedroom, for whatever reasons they want, and perhaps in their backyard or wooded area that they need to kind of hack and slash through. Sure. But if I see you at a Qdoba with a machete, I'm going to assume bad intentions. I'm sorry, but I don't see a reason. Like, what are you doing with that machete here? Are you cutting your taco bowl into smaller portions? I don't like it. And I feel threatened if someone comes in. If you're in like the brush and you have a machete, I'm like, cool, makes sense. You got your machete in the brush. But I don't, when there's not an application for

it, I think it is pretty threatening. Yeah. And that's the central tension of this item. Like we'll talk later about how much of a farming implement it is kind of in a different way. If someone drove a tractor into a Qdoba, I would also be concerned. I'd be like, why is a tractor here too? It's just Qdoba. We're just eating. If you bring like your own blender to a Qdoba, I'm afraid of you. There are so many tools that are totally appropriate to use in the right context, but when you bring them out in public, it's scary and menacing. Yeah. Oddly, that ties even more into British culture than U.S. culture with this topic because of knife crime in the U.K.

And the next number is November 23rd, 2019. That's the date of a brawl outside a movie theater in Birmingham, England. And a few of the brawl participants were carrying machetes, which were confiscated by British police. That seems organized then, like they all brought their machetes? Because that's not a coincidence. Yeah, so the thing is, this happened outside a movie theater on the opening weekend of a movie called Blue Story, which was a feature-length version of a YouTube show about modern gangs in South London. And police blamed that movie for a brawl between more than 100

teenagers. And they confiscated two machetes and one additional knife, seven officers injured, five teens arrested. And Britain has gun laws. And then they have a different knife crime problem that the US doesn't really have, which could be overstated, could be understated, but it means machetes are even more concerning to a Qdoba eater in Britain. I don't know if they have Qdoba, but if you see that, you're like, oh, one of the implements of current gang fighting. There it is. They do have Qdoba, but it's called Qdoba in it. So I'm confused. Wait, what a branding opportunity for the character q from james bond

and his many gadgets oh wow right that yeah this taco feeds you isn't that what all tacos do shop you call it um james bond's just trying to eat and he's like, behave 007. And he's like, no, I'm not doing this right now. I'm simply hungry. So for, I'm confused by why they were blaming the movie. Was it like a documentary on this that upset gangs? Or was it like a fiction that just made them want to fight? Or like, why was the blame on the movie? Because that feels like blaming Star Wars for a lightsaber fight outside of the theater. Exactly. And that's what the makers of the movie said. And it could be right. This is, it's a fictional movie. The police said, this is glorifying gang violence, including knife and machete violence.

And the creators said, no, this is a story about it. And in many ways shows the downsides of it. And it's hard to tell why just this one theater is where a fight happened because this screened all over the UK. It was a big deal. I mean, that seems like further evidence that it's not really the movie's fault, because if the movie was causing machete fights to happen, it would happen wherever the movie is. Right. You would think. Yeah. machete fights to happen, it would happen wherever the movie is. Right. You would think, yeah. And also this brawl seems to have gotten additional public attention because of when it happened. Blue Story shared its opening release weekend with Disney's Frozen 2. And so the location where the brawl happened was packed with families and small

children coming to see Frozen 2. So that's part of how there was outrage in the public. Well, that's unfortunate. But how do we know it wasn't related to Disney's Frozen 2? Like, why don't they assume that was the cause? You know, Disney's Tarzan, the villain, almost definitely had a machete. So now I'm blaming Disney. Yeah, there you go.

It's been there the whole time. That was one of the top. Clayton, I think is his name. Clayton, yeah. Top brutal Disney villain deaths. Like, yeah, he was a jerk, but he gets strangled to death by, like, he literally accidentally gets hung by vines in the forest, which, you know, wow, man. Wow. Should have had a machete. Yeah. Yeah. You know, wow, man.

Wow. Should have had a machete. Yeah. Are you a villain who is getting strangled by vines in the jungle? Whammo's machete for villains. But yeah, and one other UK number here, the next number is two years in jail. That is the proposed prison sentence for sellers of machetes in the UK. On the basis that these are primarily a gang weapon in the location of the United Kingdom. That's interesting.

So it's already illegal to sell them or are they proposing that it be illegal? They're proposing that it be illegal. Yeah. And this was a proposal in April of 2023 and proposed by a UK Home Secretary named Suella Braverman, who has since been removed from that post. Right. I mean, you know, I think that like certainly there are weapons restrictions that make sense, but I don't know. But like I don't have I don't have really strong opinions on it because I don't I have never needed a machete in my life. So, you know, but like I imagine like are there people in the UK who actually use machetes for say like farm related activities that were upset by this? Like is this a tool that is used in some context? Because like in that case, why not create sort of a licensing system where like you have to get a machete license and be above a certain age. Yeah. And that UK government seemed uninterested

in that possibility, whether it's a thing or not. The UK Home Secretary said people who are wielding these knives are, quote, thugs, and said that there should be a two-year prison sentence for anyone selling them. Also wanted to change UK law because currently if police find a machete or large knife, they're not allowed to seize it. But Braverman wanted to make it so they can seize it just on the suspicion of future criminal intents. Like if it's just in a drawer or a garage, they can take it was her hope. Right. I mean, I guess I'd want to see like statistics of machetes, like, because I personally, I think that when you look at like gun violence and deaths in the US, I think it justifies much more restrictions on gun sales. I kind of want to see that like in

terms of machete violence in the UK. I am unfamiliar with it. I didn't realize that Disney's Frozen 2 was inspiring so many people to fight with machetes. So like, I think that in certain situations, if something's really dangerous, are there British farmers, British people who use machetes regularly to, I don't know, go through the hundred acre wood and fight back strangling vines to rescue Winnie the Pooh. It's a legitimate brush clearance item. And then also maybe somebody just has one from being in another place where there's a little more vegetation, but there's a lot of vegetation everywhere. It just varies what people use to clear it. So this is something the UK is grappling with. Do we crack down on blades? And it's debatable whether they should or not. They should crack down on Blade, the movie,

because that is out of control. How many blades have there been? Seven? I think they're going for a fourth one. Really? Okay. I'm not sure. I'm more of a fan of the wild gangster epic Frozen 2. A lot of people think it's snow on the ground. It's cocaine. They're cocaine cowboys in Frozen. Yeah. The ice queen. Uh-huh. Okay. Tell me more. Machetes. Swinging back to the U.S. for a second, the next number is 1826, because 1826 is when three Americans founded the Collins Company in Connecticut. Collins started out as two brothers and their cousin, and their first product was axes. They would just mill a few axes each day. Okay. Like just the three of them, or did they own an axe factory? The three of them with a mill, like a water mill,

in Connecticut in 1826. And then within 40 years, they grew and expanded to become the largest edge tool manufacturer in the world, primarily making machetes in the 1860s. old, primarily making machetes in the 1860s. Well, good for them, I guess. They really pulled themselves up by their axe straps. It's a real axes to machetes American story. Right. It's how you start out as rags.

You chopped up all your good clothes. Oh, no, I need to sew them back together. I was too good at making edged tools. So when they, I assume they now have like a factory or more production capabilities for making these machetes. It's not just the three of them furiously working away at machetes, right? They're not that big of a thing anymore, but especially early 1900s and into World War II era, they were massive and made more than half their money from making machetes for export to tropical places. And so it turns out a lot of like 1800s, 1900s machetes were American or British or German. Oh, interesting. And then shipped to other parts of the world.

Were they shipped for foreigners to use in those other parts of the world or for the people who actually lived there to use them? Or both, I guess. It turns out both, yeah. Collins also got a particularly big contract in World War II from the U.S. military. World War II? They made over one million machetes. Oh, right.

Probably for getting through brush because I was thinking like, didn't we have better weapons at that point? I'm really good at like war history. I'm pretty sure we stopped using horses in Vietnam or something. But yeah, no. Okay. All right. So the machete, that was probably used for combat in densely wooded areas during World War II?

Yeah, in particular, the Pacific theater. U.S. troops would use them in various tropical islands of the Pacific. Right. Okay. Yeah. And like you said, it was for chopping brush, not as a main weapon. Right. No one went at Hitler with a machete, although I wish they had. That would have been really sick. But you can't because he's a big Wolfenstein robot with chain guns.

So it doesn't work. Yeah. But then you get even more machetes, like. Oh, machete, chain gun. Maybe it's a two machete job, right? Or a three machete job. I think anyone can be taken down with a machete as long as you just add more machetes to the equation. But clearly machetes have been a thing for a really long time. They didn't

invent the machete. Do you know, where does the word machete come from? Like this word is probably not what everyone from all the places that the machete was used for probably like, I would imagine like maybe thousands of years probably wouldn't use the word machete everywhere. So where did machete come from? Yeah, that's all dead on. And we won't have any specific origin or biggest maker of machetes because it's been parallel invented kind of everywhere. Just anybody who can blacksmith tools made big blades and use them. That makes sense. Do we know where the word machete comes from? Like what is it like French machete? It turns out it's Spanish. Oh, okay. Yeah.

And it also speaks to a early and current use of these because apparently the word machete is a diminutive form of the Spanish word macho. Oh. And in the U.S., we think of macho as masculine stuff in English, but it turns out in actual Spanish, macho can mean sledgehammer. Oh. And it's also related to the words for clubs, the words for maces, and machetes then and now are used sometimes in construction for like breaking things. Oh, so like the flat end. It can be the blade and you just make it dull fast.

Oh, interesting. Yeah, you really wear it out. But yeah. And apparently construction workers in Latin America use them to split cinder blocks to this day. So machetes are a little macho, just a little macho. Yeah, they're a little macho. And the name comes from little hammer, basically. The sword vibe is not why we call them that. And I think it's part of why British people call them cutlasses, because that's a little more accurate to the British use. Like, oh, it's a sword. Sword for plants.

Yeah. Yeah, that's where the name comes from. And there's an interesting industrial situation where, for a while, machetes picked up another name in Spanish, which is Un Collins. Oh, interesting. This American Collins company made so many that they genericized their name into what some people in Latin America called this. There's also some very strange early 1900s machete slang. And this is a threat that developed.

People started coining the phrase, stick you all the way to the Collins. Oh. Which was slang for, I'm going to impale you with this machete so deep that it'll go all the way to the Collins logo near the bottom of the blade near the handle. Well, isn't that lovely?

Yeah, this is one of our first episodes about something dangerous, like on its face. And so some of that's the show, like it's pretty tough. There are a lot of ways to make the other topics dangerous, like drinking WD-40, I imagine, would be bad. Yeah, as much as we wanted people to, it's bad. Yeah, it's true. Bad. Yeah. As much as we wanted people to, it's bad. Yeah, it's true.

Yeah. We kept telling people to do it. It's true though. Yeah. Like, and there's a barbed wire episode. There are topics with sharpness or darkness, but, but yeah, this one has been used as a threat or an item like that in many situations. Which is, it's interesting because that's not what I associate machetes with. They seem more of a hacky thing, right?

Like you whack, you hack. Yeah, chop it. But like stabbing, it's, I mean, usually when I think of a machete, I think of a, essentially like a long rhombus or trapezoid. And then with an edge, a sharpened edge, but then it's flat on the top. So like if you're, sure, there's like a point on the corner, but if you're trying to like stab someone with that, it doesn't seem, now look, I've personally never tried to stab anyone, but you know, so I'm not a professional stabber, but like it doesn't seem all that effective is what I'm saying.

So that like threat of like, I will stab you all the way. It's like, will you though? And it does seem like this threat came from white people and possibly ones who are not great at machete use. Like they're not, they're like, this is just something I could say to other people. And it's not, it's not a good idea. Yeah. It's like, like saying like, I will use these chopsticks to pluck out your eyeballs. It's like, I'd like to see you try, white person.

Thinking more broadly about this item, the next number is two. There tend to be two reasons for machetes to be common in a region. One is that there's a tropical climate, there's more vegetation to chop through. But the other is the farming and harvesting of large, tough, grassy crops. Right. And the key ones are sugarcane and banana plants, and until pretty recently, maize, a.k.a. corn. I mean, it's interesting because the scythe now has this association with death, right? Death carries a scythe. Yeah. But it was like a harvesting tool.

And the whole point of the images of death carrying the scythe isn't that it's a cool weapon. It's that he's harvesting people. He's harvesting human souls or lives or something. So he's carrying the harvesting tool. So similarly, it's like a machete. It's like, yeah, it seems like a useful harvesting tool. It is to this day. And yeah, it's exactly right.

And the biggest surprise to me within that is going to be takeaway number two. within that is going to be takeaway number two. For a couple hundred years, Europeans used machetes to harvest maize. There was a whole culture of corn knives in colonial North America. Corn knives. And that's just kind of gone a different direction than most sugar harvesting and most banana harvesting. Why did we? I mean, it seems to make sense. I've never tried to cut down a corn stalk before, but they seem tough. Yeah. Boy, we're making a lot of enemies of plants this week, aren't we?

Bring it on, plant. But they are, and the reason that people wanted to use them is basically that they had a colonizer monoculture field approach to growing corn, which is a way you can grow it. But before people started coming to North America from Europe, there were native people here who tended to grow corn along with squash and with beans in an arrangement called the Three Sisters. corn along with squash and with beans in an arrangement called the three sisters. And the corn is a trellis for the beans. So then they would tend to hand pick the ears and leave the plant there. And so you don't need a huge chopping thing to harvest corn effectively if you do that. I mean, it seems like that would be slower, but maybe better for the soil, like where you don't have to replant stuff all the time. And they also didn't have a ton of livestock where a lot of monoculture cut it down type farmers will feed the remaining plant stocks to livestock. And so that's useful the way it is.

But when Europeans learned about maize, aka corn, they said, great, I want to chop it down every year. And how do I do that? Man, that's such a European move. Like, I've learned about this thing. Violence. Violence is what I'm going to, how I'm going to approach this new thing. Yeah, and that fits their whole deal. We say they, but I'm pretty sure we both

descended from Europeans. Yeah, and so us? I don't know. Us. Machete is always the answer to us. Yeah, they really ran with machetes for chopping down. You shouldn't do that.

That's not safe. It's like scissors rules. It's scissors rules for machetes. Yeah. It's half a scissor already. Figure it out. Right? It's a big, it's like a half of one of those scissors they use to cut the big like ribbons for like, welcome to your new city water fountain. And then they use the big scissors, but I'd like it if they use like a golden machete, just like whamp. Or somebody has the scissors, but they're like, I dedicate this bridge with these two machetes. And then they don't stick around for questions. Nobody gets to ask them why.

We should call scissors jointed machetes. Jointed machetes. Feels good. Yeah. Yeah. And I think in people's heads, machetes are a farm tool primarily for something like sugar. And that's partly because it's harvested a lot. It turns out sugarcane is the world's number one crop by harvest volume. And because it's a big, heavy plant, that's part of why. According to Charles C. Mann, writing in his book 1493,

the five most popular crops on earth are potatoes, number five, rice, number four, wheat, number three, but then number two is maize and number one is sugarcane. And both of those have a long history of machete harvesting. And this is still true today. Yeah, today. That's today. Right. Okay. Yeah. I mean, we put sugar in like everything. Like sugar is used in a lot of foods, especially in America, other than just like dessert stuff. Totally.

Yeah. Yeah. And so the demand has only ever gone up. And I looked into it. It turns out there is some machine harvesting of sugar at this point. Turns out there is some machine harvesting of sugar at this point. I found a wonky technical YouTube video by an agricultural machinery company who showed sugar farmers in Brazil doing mechanical harvesting of sugar. But that only really started to get going in the mid-1990s. And Encyclopedia Britannica says as much as two-thirds of world sugar is harvested by hand.

Britannica says as much as two thirds of world sugar is harvested by hand. So that sugar in all of our diets, especially in the US, it's often depending on machetes to this day. Is that because like the labor is really inexpensive or is it just really hard to create a machine that hacks down? Because is this like cane sugar? Is it sugar beets? Is like cane sugar the... Yeah, cane sugar. And it's mostly the first thing. The labor isn't expensive enough that mechanizing doesn't make sense. Right, right. Well... It turns out I had never thought of it this way. And even making our maze episode, it didn't really come up. But today it's all, it's essentially all harvested by a big combine harvester, like a big John Deere type vehicle.

Right. For corn, but machete is still hand done. Yeah. Sugar is still hand done. And then, then there's not an army of people with blades. I'd be interested to know like how that affects the economy of the local areas where they're collecting the cane sugar. Because if it's like cheap enough that mechanizing is more expensive than using human labor, I would imagine that their wages are really low. But on the other hand, like how much buying power does that have locally? The point is like how guilty should I feel the next time I crack open a bag of sweet and low? I know, I know you, you meant like a packet of sweet and low, but what do you said? A bag of sweet and low. I imagined you with a very big bag, like hugging it. What do you mean? Like, yeah, that is what I meant.

Oh, okay. Cool. Like winning the poo with a honey pot, like barely able to get your arms around it. Yeah, I mean, like, look, espressos are bitter, man. I got to do what I got to do. Losing the cup and the mound. It's just a pile. And I sit down there like Tony Montana, Scarface. Right, or Elsa from Frozen. Sure.

Or Elsa from Frozen, yeah. Right. Or Elsa from Frozen. Sure. Or Elsa from Frozen. Yeah. Yeah. So is Olaf just like a cocaine golem? Yep. Okay. Correct. Yeah.

All right. That's right. Okay. Makes sense. That's why kids love him, you know? Can't get enough of him. So there was a whole culture of European machetes for corn, for maize, and they called these corn knives. And there's an amazing Atlas Obscura piece with pictures of them, a bunch of them,

and they just look like machetes. There might be small modifications to the blade, but that is what Europeans used all the way until they started mechanizing maize harvesting. And that has also helped create a vibe around machetes, where machetes are seen as tropical and seen as more of a developing world thing, if you want to call it that. Because the places where people used to use machetes are more mechanized now. And then one place sees the other place as different because of that. That makes sense. That's really interesting, though, how changes in agricultural practices shape our view of things, because I'm sure there is a certain element to machetes being used more in these

other countries, more developing countries, where it's like they're not just using an AK-47 to cut down all of the brush in the area and harvest bananas. So what's going on there? What's wrong with them? Right. Have they heard of napalm? Come on. Our weird take, I guess. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And we have more to say about sugar and machetes and a bunch more stats and numbers. We're going to dig into that after a quick break. I'm Jesse Thorne. I just don't want to leave a mess.

This week on Bullseye, Dan Aykroyd talks to me about the Blues Brothers, Ghostbusters, and his very detailed plans about how he'll spend his afterlife. I think I'm going to roam in a few places. Yes, I'm going to manifest and roam. All that and more on the next Bullseye from MaximumFun.org and NPR. hello teachers and faculty this is janet varney i'm here to remind you that listening to my podcast the jv club with janet varney is part of the curriculum for the school year learning about the teenage years of such guests as allison br, Vicki Peterson, John Hodgman, and so many more is a valuable and enriching experience, one you have no choice but to embrace because, yes, listening is mandatory.

The JV Club with Janet Varney is available every Thursday on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you. And remember, no running in the halls. And we're back and with many more numbers. Still thinking about sugar? The next one is 2,500 years ago. That's when humans began refining sugar for food.

Oh. About 2,500 years ago. Well, can you blame us? Yeah, we love it now. And according to two researchers at the University of Bristol, Mark Horton and Philip Langton, they say people in India were probably the first people to turn sugar cane into a refined ingredient for foods. And sugar could be its own whole episode, but the super short version is that we mill or

diffuse the cane to squeeze the juice out of it and then process that juice and crystallize it and get sugar. Oh, that's really interesting. We're like juicing the cane. You juice your cane, bro. Yeah, juicing the cane is always sort of what you need to do. But I imagine that was this like enabled by the fact that there was machetes present at the time, like, like 2000 years ago? What age is that? Is that like, the Bronze Age, the machete age? age? Yes. 2,500 years ago, people had blades like machetes for sure. Yeah. It depends what metal they made it out of different places, but yeah. Right. The other weird thing about sugar cane is humans might've first grown it as animal feed in particular for pigs because pigs can just eat that cane. And we think that human farmers later chewed on it from time to time and then figured out, hey, let's turn this into something. And then we really wanted machetes

for like chopping it down right and processing it. Have you ever chewed on sugar cane? No, never. I have. It's interesting. Very fibrous, very like sticky. Because I think I saw it in the grocery store once and like my mom let me have it for the experience. And yeah, it's like it's kind of interesting. Like it's definitely not just like eating a candy cane, but it's like very it's very like thick and fibrous. Yeah, I would try it for sure. It seems like, if nothing else, a tactile fun experience, you know? Yeah. Very sticky. Probably not fun for my mom, but fun for me. I guess with little kids, also all candy is doing that to them.

Yeah. So it's like, oh, what's another mess? I don't know. You just kind of create a layer of sticky everywhere. Yeah, yeah. And then the next step of sugar, in particular with machetes, is that they were both spread pretty worldwide, initially by trade and then by colonialism and slavery. Because sugar canes first grown at small scales in locations like Sicily and Cyprus. And then one of the leading countries of spreading this was Portugal, who set up a trading system of colonies in West Africa for enslaving people and then colonies of growing sugar cane, mainly in Brazil, and using boats across the Atlantic to do that. So did the demand for sugar kind of drive the demand for enslaved people? It did. And then in sort of a footnote way, the demand for machete production. They were like, we don't just need somebody to smith this in a town because we're running a horrible slavery enterprise across the sea. We need a whole box

of machetes now. Right, right. Yeah. I mean, you know, like if they made espresso less bitter, maybe that would have prevented the mass enslavement of people. I like the idea that there's one lovely coffee shop that you have some grudge with that keeps making too bitter of an espresso for you. And like everything gets bent back to blaming them. And they're so friendly. It's so cute. And you're just. And they're so friendly. It's so cute. And you're just like, they're so nice. It's your fault. All of the historic evils are your fault.

Coffee's too bitter. Yeah. And then this process in maybe the most famous way involving machetes peaks with a revolution in Haiti. Because in 1791, enslaved laborers in the French colony of Haiti begin a successful war for independence. It takes several years, but they both free themselves from slavery and become independent from France. And machetes become somewhat notorious as a weapon of the rebels in the successful Haitian revolution. Isn't there something where like France still claims that Haiti owes them some debt, even though France like was, you know, a colonizer who

enslaved the people there? They're like, yeah, but you still owe us all this money. Because like, I thought that was part of the agreement at the end of the revolution where it was like, like France would back off, but they're owed some kind of debt. But instead of today being like, okay, we kind of see how we were the baddies. Aren't they still just like, yeah, we still want that money though. Absolutely. yeah. One little known thing about the Haitian Revolution is they had to kind of do it twice over because when they first did it, that was shortly before there was a revolution in France. And the Republican French government banned slavery because equality and liberty for people, no more slavery.

Because equality and liberty for people, no more slavery. But then in 1802, Napoleon Bonaparte reestablishes slavery because he's a horrible guy. And then sends an army to try to retake control of Haiti. And then Haiti has to do a whole nother revolution and war against that guy. And then to cap all that off, 1825, the French government demanded reparations payments from the new country of Haiti. And then through basically a series of loans and chicanery and a big assist from US President Thomas Jefferson along the way is able to like keep putting economic pressure on Haiti for many decades after that. Yeah. And I thought that like you could, you can attribute a lot of the sort of economic situation even today to the continuation of this quote unquote debt.

Yeah. Yeah. The French government claimed they were making some landowners whole, but some of those landowners also tried to own people. And then the funny accounting, like they basically did a series of funny accounting to bring it away from the slave part, but still make a debt out of that, if that makes sense. Yeah. I mean, like, I feel like if you're like, well, you know, I'm owed some money.

I did own a person at that point. Like none of what you say should be listened to. Yeah. I don't, I don't have sympathy for your lost income. If you owned a person, it should throw off your credit rating. I guess it would be, yeah, it should be really bad for your credit score, but actually it turns out not owning people hurts your credit score. hurts your credit score. Nuts. It's tough. Yeah. And part of the difficult situation Haitian people were in is that they were forced to focus on cash crops, in particular plants like sugar. And so then when they begin embarking on a revolutionary war, a lot of them have machetes as a sugar harvesting tool.

Also, legally, a lot of them have been prevented from learning how to use something like a gun. So even as the Haitian army starts to acquire traditional weapons, machetes remain on hand, no training needed, no ammunition needed. And so in that particular conflict, it becomes a very, very important weapon for achieving that independence. Um, and then it's like, oh, but heavens, they're so brutal by, you know, attacking people with machetes when they're having their revolution. It's a real, it's like they, it's, it's kind of a catch 22, right? Where it's, you know, here is this tool that you're forced to use because your labor is being stolen.

And then now that you're using this tool to liberate yourself, it's like, oh, but look, I mean, look how, you know, savage this is. They're using machetes. A thousand percent. Yeah. That's been used by some people in some eras to try to put a bad vibe on the people they're oppressing and say like, oh, look how, look how undignified they are. They should be using guns for murder is the pitch. And it doesn't make sense.

Yeah. Slave revolts are so undignified they're supposed to just like lit us enslave them right maybe free themselves with like a snarky tweet or so you know like they should just vote themselves free right like they're not allowed to but you know yeah and and also i we don't want to be like glorifying a weapon on its own either. And I'm just going to link people off to some tragedies that have involved machetes, in particular a genocide in Rwanda in 1994. We all know that's just awful with any tool that's used. The very last story in the main show here, the number is 1975, because that is the year when the country of Angola gained independence from Portugal and adopted a flag featuring a machete. Machete flag. That's, I mean, look, I do think you are right to say like we do not condone machetes and the use of violence against

innocents but um a machete flag is sick it's it's so cool it's very it's very kick butt right kick butt flag i i like the it's like the california flag i know i'm a californian and so i'm a little biased but it's got a freaking bear on it. It's red. So it's my favorite. It's my favorite state flag because of the freaking bear. Similarly, I got props for having a machete on your flag. That's please don't tell me that the people who made this flag committed horrible atrocities against humans, because that would make me sad.

We're not going that way with it, no. Okay. Because the thing is, I had primarily assumed it was a flag machete of violence, and that might be one influence there. But amazingly, takeaway number three, In Angola, machetes are the equivalent of a Soviet sickle. It turns out that the hammer and sickle for the New Angolan people, it was localized and regionalized into their own version. And I don't support communism. It's not great. I do like that

the Angolan flag machete is primarily an agricultural symbol. Okay. All right. Well, so I can still say it's an awesome flag, hopefully without people being mad at me. And we'll link a picture of this flag. Its flag is half black, half red. And then there's a central yellow image. The yellow image is a piece of an industrial cog crossed with a machete instead of a hammer crossed with a sickle. Yeah, it's a very cool flag.

Like, you know, I just aesthetically speaking, it's pretty awesome. Um, I don't know much about Angolan politics, so I can't say like that. I agree with everything that this flag represents, but just visually speaking, it's rad. What am I going to do? Am I going to lie and say it's a machete on a flag isn't cool? Because it is. Yeah, before when I a little hesitated to say we were going a good way, basically immediately after Angola achieved independence, they had a couple decades of civil war. Oh.

And so the people who picked this were on one side of a really long civil war. It's hard to say exactly who's good or bad in the whole situation. Can I redact everything I've said in the last five minutes then? Sure. I think it's exciting that it's a farmer machete and a symbol of labor. Right. You know, in that contained way, it's awesome. And the other exciting thing is that they threw off Portuguese rule, which was just bad.

Hey, yeah. And the other exciting thing is that they threw off Portuguese rule, which was just bad. Hey, yeah. Look, my philosophy is violence is usually bad. Like 99.9% of the time, I think violence is bad. But machetes are cool. So it's kind of, it's hard to hold both positions at the same time sometimes, but I try to do it. Yeah, I agree. And the Portuguese colonial situation was even worse than you'd think, because according to historian Lawrence James, writing the book Empires in the Sun about post-colonial Africa, the Portuguese put what's now Angola through many generations of slave trading, but they also put it through a 1900s European fascist dictatorship.

That sounds bad. and mostly defeat fascism by the 1940s, Portugal had an autocratic dictatorship from the mid-1930s all the way to the mid-1970s. Whoa. Like they were just holed up being kind of fascist over there while we were all glad about VE Day, you know? Right. They weren't, they like were too busy with their fascism to look up and see everyone else was trying to move on.

Exactly. And and they were mainly led by a dictator named Salazar. And apparently as his hold on Portugal slipped, he tried to fix that by increasing exploitation of its African colonies. And so that sparked a set of combined wars for independence by what are now a set of countries, including Angola. Okay. Yeah. I mean, like, just have them look at a calendar. Like, it's the 70s, dude. What are you doing? Right. Like, Saturday Night Fever is in theaters. We're done with the fascism. It's over. John Travolta is the it guy and you're still doing fascism? Come on. Yeah, come on.

And the Angolan Revolution, after they succeed, they design a new flag for their country. It turns out they were Marxist-Leninists and had direct Soviet support. And so that's why they adapted a Soviet hammer and sickle. They made their own version. They updated a hammer to be a piece of a factory cog, which is just more modern. And then instead of a sickle for harvesting Russian wheat, they went with a machete for harvesting and handling tropical plants. And harvesting cogs. Got it. Like we said, it's in a limited and specific way, but in that way, I love this flag.

It's cool that there's a symbol of labor that is a machete on a national flag. It is very interesting. It's got a very interesting history. It's very cool. Yeah. The next step is like a bear and a machete on a flag. Like the bear is holding the machete, and that's as far as I got, but I think we can work with it with like a government grant. We can get this flag to really become like the new California

flag is just a bear with a couple of machetes in a righteous way. Using them in a righteous way, not a wrong-cious way. Turning off microphones, going into secret room. Don't tell the government that's 99% of the idea. We are basically all set. Turning microphones back on. We really need a government grant to finish this. I don't know how we're going to figure it out even without money. I know. We got to put it to a vote. Hey, folks, that's the main episode for this week. Welcome to the outro with fun features for you, such as help remembering this episode with a run back through the big takeaways. Takeaway number one, machetes are a former United States children's toy. Takeaway number two, for a couple hundred years, Europeans used machetes to harvest maize. Takeaway number three,

in Angola, machetes are the equivalent of a Soviet sickle. And this is one of our more numbers-heavy episodes about everything from British crime laws to U.S. political conventions to the history of Haiti. Those are the takeaways. Also, I said that's the main episode because there is more secretly incredibly fascinating stuff available to you right now if you support this show at MaximumFun.org. Members are the reason this podcast exists, so members get a bonus show every week where we explore one obviously incredibly fascinating story related to the main episode. This week's bonus topic is the bizarre rise and fall of lawn darts. Visit sifpod.fun for that bonus show, for a library of almost 15 dozen other secretly incredibly fascinating bonus shows,

and a catalog of all sorts of MaxFun bonus shows. It's special audio. It's just for members. Thank you to everybody who backs this podcast operation. Additional fun things. Check out our research sources on this episode's page at MaximumFun.org. Key sources this week include a phenomenal piece for the Object Lessons research series from The Atlantic that's written by John Klein. Also a great gastro-obscura piece on corn knives, that's by Lee Chavez Bush. A technical video about sugar harvesting mechanization from CNH machines. And lots more digital resources, in particular work on Haudenosaunee harvesting,

that's by researcher Jane Mount Pleasant of Cornell University. That page also features resources such as native-land.ca. I'm using those to acknowledge that I recorded this in Lenapehoking, the traditional land of the Munsee Lenape people and the Wappinger people, as well as the Mohican people, Skadagoke people, and others. in many other locations in the Americas and elsewhere, Native people are very much still here. That feels worth doing on each episode. And join the Free SIF Discord, where we're sharing stories and resources about Native people and life.

There is a link in this episode's description to join that Discord. We're also talking about this episode on the Discord, and hey, would you like a tip on another episode? Because each week I'm finding you something randomly incredibly fascinating by running all the past episode numbers through a random number generator. This week's pick is episode seven. That's about the topic of Venus. Also, that reminds me to thank everybody following what I'm doing on TikTok and on Reels. I'm doing new videos there.

And one of them covers something we covered in that episode about Soviet missions to Venus. That was a lot of fun to make. And the podcast has so much more. So I recommend that podcast episode. I also recommend my co-host Katie Golden's weekly podcast, Creature Feature, about animals and science and more. Our theme music is Unbroken Unshaven by the Budos Band. Our show logo is by artist Burton Durand.

Special thanks to Chris Souza for audio mastering on this episode. Special thanks to the Beacon Music Factory for taping support. Extra, extra special thanks go to our members and thank you to all our listeners. I am thrilled to say we will be back next week with more secretly incredibly fascinating

So How About That? Talk to you then. Maximum Fun. A worker-owned network of artists own shows supported directly by you