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In the 1950s, Senator Fulbright from Arkansas politely told a gathering of NATO countries that he would withhold military aid if the French and Germans put a tariff on American frozen chicken. Arkansas was home to not only the largest chicken corporation in the world, but also dozens of Titan II missile silos. If you like our content, please become a patron to get more bonus episodes like this one, and all of our public episodes ad-free as well.

This strange congruence of conflicting nefarious interests incidentally led us to the environmental catastrophe we face decades later. The Johnson administration's retaliation to the chicken tax was to put a tariff on trucks, and in response the American car companies doubled up on marketing trucks and SUVs to Americans due to that protected market.

So in a manner of speaking, the reason that the sky here in Dallas is yellow with exhaust fumes on a hot summer day is because of fallout from a war over frozen chickens, although presidents after Johnson and Kennedy have done their part to push us further toward ruin as well. ^{1, 2}

Not to be outdone: hog farms. We also discuss the abuses of the hog farming industry in North Carolina and how they inevitably pollute rivers after every single hurricane hits that state, from overflowing open-pit waste collection ponds.

As we mention in the episode, this video was captured by a reporter investigating a coal ash spill after hurricane Florence in 2018. We found out later that the coal ash was mixed with pig feces. ³