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Joe Palca, are you prepared? Are you ready to go to Locustown?

I am Dr. Matty Sophia Person. Go ahead.

Okay, Joe Palca. You were in Arizona visiting kind of an unusual lab.

Yes, I was. I was in a lab in the middle of Tempe, Arizona that's filled with locusts.

Locusts.

My understanding of locusts is very biblical, like terrifying, swarmy.

Yep. That's the locust we're talking about, but they're not just biblical, because today,

as we sit here in Studio 44 in Washington, D.C., there are major issues.

For example, in Kenya and Ethiopia and Somalia, there are huge swarms of locusts.

And these swarms, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations,

are, quote, extremely alarming and represent an unprecedented threat to food security and livelihoods in the region.

So, how do we fight it?

So the problem is, you can't spray them into submission.

I mean, there's too many of them. It's too big an area. It's a lot of pesticides.

So what they're trying to do at the lab in Arizona is come up with other ways.

And one of them has to do with what locusts like to eat.

So today on the show, how do you prevent a plague of locusts?

The solution could be a low-carb diet.

Okay, Joe, let's start with some basics. What is a locust?

This is an interesting question because here's the mantra that you hear from every locust researcher I've ever talked to.

And here it goes.

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