When Parakeets Plundered New York
Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford
Pushkin Industries
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 14 July 2023
⏱️ 36 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Cautionary Conversation: An invasive parakeet species began spreading in New York City - and the government decided to kill every last bird. Tim Harford is joined by Ben Naddaff-Hafrey, host of The Last Archive, to talk about the great parakeet panic of the 1970s and a history of anxieties about population growth.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Pushkin |
| 0:07.0 | It's nice to have visitors from time to time, especially cute visitors. |
| 0:15.0 | So it was in America in the 1950s. |
| 0:17.9 | Who wouldn't want an adorable little parakeet for a pet? |
| 0:22.2 | In Argentina, the parakeet was an agricultural pest, rats with gaudy wings, brightly feathered, |
| 0:29.1 | capturing locusts. |
| 0:30.7 | The Argentines were happy to ship them up north as an exotic pet. |
| 0:35.2 | And for a while, America was happy to receive those parakeets. |
| 0:39.7 | Except parakeets can be gratingly annoying, all that talking and talking, it's cute until |
| 0:47.5 | it isn't. |
| 0:49.0 | And so people started releasing them into the wild. |
| 0:53.5 | And then in 1969, catastrophe. |
| 0:58.0 | A shipping crate fell apart at JFK Airport, hundreds of parakeets escaped, maybe thousands, |
| 1:04.4 | maybe. |
| 1:06.0 | Everyone could see what would happen next. |
| 1:08.0 | It would breed, and breed, and soon there would be parakeets everywhere, marauding and |
| 1:14.1 | pillaging like cute little flying Vikings. |
| 1:18.0 | I'm Tim Harford, and this is a special cautionary conversation about the great parakeet panic. |
| 1:28.0 | Today, our cautionary conversation is with Ben Nadaf Haffrey, the long-time producer |
| 1:53.1 | and the new host and writer of our sister podcast, The Last Archive. |
| 1:57.2 | Hello, Ben. |
| 1:58.2 | Hey, Tim. |
... |
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