232 - The Great Emu War

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: store@badmagicproductions.com (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. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.