Hey everyone Jody here. It is hard to believe but we are already into holiday season for 2021

So over the next month or so we're gonna keep doing new shows and we've also got some really cool end of year specials plan.

One thing we're going to do is take a couple episodes and follow up on a bunch of tidbits

from stories that we covered throughout the year.

So if you have something you want us to follow up on, big or small, get in touch.

We're also going to give ourselves the whole team here a little bit of time off, and

so during those stretches we will run back some of our favorite conversations from the

year. So that's what we're going to do this week,

Thanksgiving week, and then we'll be back with new episodes the Tuesday after

Thanksgiving. We hope you have a great Thanksgiving that you travel and stay safe

and get to spend some time with friends and loved ones and by the way if any of those friends or loved ones say hey you got any podcast recommendations you know what to do.

Okay let's get into it.

Here's one of our favorite episodes from 2021.

Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from Radiotopia.

My name is Jody Avergan.

This day, April 15, 1996, it actually took place on April 16th, an episode of the Oprah Winfrey show airs in which the talk show host

proclaims that she would no longer eat hamburgers. This was during a segment with a man

named Howard Lyman, a cattle rancher turned vegetarian activist.

Lyman was describing a disease called bovine, spongiform, and sepulopathy,

which from now on I'm going to call BSE. I will never have to say those three words again, but BSE is also known as Mad cow disease. We will call it Mad cow disease from now on. It was a disease that was spreading in the UK. Millions of cows had been

ordered to be slaughtered. A number of people had died as a result of eating tainted

beef. And on the show, Lyman argued that the danger was growing in the United States, and in response,

...