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  • - [Man] The American nation can not,

  • must now, and will not, from empty establishment,

  • form another communist government.

  • - This is called a Cavendish banana.

  • It's the most common banana on earth.

  • It's probably the one that

  • you have in your kitchen right now.

  • It's definitely the one you see in the grocery store.

  • This banana was created in a fancy looking house in England.

  • Yes, created and yes, in England.

  • Kind of weird, bananas aren't from England.

  • They're originally from Asia and there are thousands

  • of different kinds of bananas.

  • So how did this banana,

  • the Cavendish that was created in England

  • become the banana that you eat today?

  • Well, the answer to that is not so simple.

  • You have to understand the story of bananas, which yes,

  • is something we're diving into today.

  • It's a story filled with predatory corporations

  • and geopolitics and American imperialism and disease,

  • and really some amazing marketing.

  • It explains how corporations can grow so big

  • that they begin to act like governments, like dictators.

  • And it explains why this banana, the Cavendish,

  • the one you know and love, might not exist soon.

  • - [Woman] The world's most popular banana

  • may be on the verge of extinction.

  • Oh, and while I was diving deep into this,

  • I discovered that there's a better tasting banana out there.

  • One that isn't supposed to exist anymore,

  • but I got my hands on some and yes, they're better.

  • So buckle up.

  • This is the F'd up history of bananas.

  • We're pausing this story really quick because I just need to

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  • So bananas are from Southeast Asia, but like 400 years ago,

  • Europeans were taking over the world

  • and the Portuguese brought bananas over to the Americas.

  • A few hundred years later,

  • an American sailor was in Jamaica

  • and he found this funny looking exotic yellow fruit

  • and money started flashing in his eyes.

  • He started selling bananas to Americans

  • who quickly loved this new fruit.

  • Bananas were trending.

  • People were talking about it.

  • So then fast forward to nearly the end of the 1800s.

  • And you have the World's Fair,

  • where all the people show up

  • and show off their new technology.

  • At the fair you've got this guy,

  • Alexander Graham bell,

  • who's showing up with his cute little new invention

  • that's about to change the world.

  • But another crowd favorite at the expo was the banana.

  • Yes, bananas were equally as impressive

  • as the telephone at the World's Fair.

  • The banana business started booming in the United States.

  • Much of these bananas flowing in from New York City.

  • The port there was dubbed Banana Docks for a while

  • because of so much fruit import.

  • So now you have all these Americans eating the sweet,

  • creamy, delicious fruit,

  • and throwing the slippery peels onto the street.

  • It got so bad that the police commissioner at the time,

  • oh God, I can't get away from this guy.

  • Teddy Roosevelt once again.

  • I swear I get into any story,

  • I like to start to research it.

  • And it's like, yeah.

  • And then there's an American imperialism.

  • And Teddy Roosevelt shows up.

  • Anyway, so Teddy Roosevelt,

  • the police commissioner starts putting a fine on people for

  • throwing their banana peels on the sidewalk.

  • Like this isn't just like a silly, fake joke.

  • It's like, this is a real thing.

  • People slipped on banana peels.

  • - Patrick, banana peel!

  • - What did you say? (screams)

  • - And you could go to jail for it. I mean, look at this.

  • There's this New York Times article

  • documenting Teddy Roosevelt,

  • the police commissioner,

  • speaking to a room of police captains, explaining quote,

  • the bad habits of banana skins and dwelling

  • particularly on its tendency to toss people into the air

  • and bring them down with terrific force

  • on the hard pavement.

  • This was a real issue.

  • Banana Docks, Teddy Roosevelt, slippery banana peels,

  • silly newspaper articles from the late 1800s.

  • This isn't the story here. We're just getting started.

  • This is banana's innocent phase.

  • It's about to heat up.

  • Let's see how bananas turned from this to this.

  • (upbeat music)

  • The banana business people in the US realized

  • it was time to ramp up to meet all of this new demand.

  • But instead of just importing more bananas from say

  • Jamaica or other countries in the Caribbean,

  • the banana companies realized

  • that they needed to control the supply chain.

  • Let me explain what I mean by second,

  • by looking at this banana.

  • Bananas are fragile. They're soft.

  • They spoil in like a week,

  • but this one's like moments away from spoiling.

  • Look at those spots.

  • To get this thing from somewhere close to the equator

  • all the way to New York City and then into someone's market

  • and then into somebody's home all without it being crushed

  • and without it spoiling is a fragile,

  • quick, expensive process.

  • And the only way to do it profitably is to do a lot of it.

  • A lot of bananas.

  • (upbeat music)

  • And the only way to do a lot of bananas

  • is to control the supply chain.

  • So it's like 1900 at this point,

  • there's a banana gold rush happening.

  • And there's a bunch of companies trying to figure out

  • how to control the supply chain.

  • And then they decided to sort of merge together and become

  • this one super company called the United Fruit Company.

  • And their plan for combining was to

  • control everything, control the supply chain.

  • They turned their attention completely to Central America

  • where they know bananas could grow abundantly,

  • and where, oh, look at this.

  • The US is thinking about making a little canal that cuts

  • through this little narrow strip of land.

  • So the United Fruit Company is like,

  • that's kind of a nice perk for the region.

  • If anything goes wrong,

  • the US could have our backs.

  • Foreshadowing.

  • Am I foreshadowing? I'm foreshadowing.

  • So yeah, United Fruit Company is like,

  • this region, central America ,

  • looks like a great neighborhood to control the supply chain.

  • They wanted to control the people who worked

  • on the farm by owning their basic survival needs.

  • They wanted to control the houses they lived in

  • and the stores they shopped in and what they could buy.

  • They wanted to control the transportation by building

  • railways so that they could quickly ship

  • their product onto ports.

  • They wanted to control the boats and the waterways so that

  • they could get all of these bananas from Central America

  • to the US before they spoiled.

  • They started with Guatemala,

  • pouring tons of investment into

  • controlling every inch of their supply chain.

  • Soon, they were the largest company in Guatemala.

  • They owned a fifth of the farmable land in the country.

  • They owned all of the railways and

  • all of the radio stations and radio infrastructure.

  • And by 1901,

  • the government of Guatemala actually hired the

  • United Fruit Company to manage the country's postal service.

  • What?

  • United Fruit was starting to look a lot like a government.

  • And the result was a lot of happy banana eating Americans.

  • So they kept going.

  • They kept expanding their operations across Central America.

  • So now with all of this beautiful infrastructure

  • and trains and land,

  • the next strategy for making bananas even more profitable

  • was, you guessed it, paying the workers next to nothing.

  • And paying them not with real money.

  • (upbeat music)

  • A lot of the times United Fruit

  • paid their workers in vouchers.

  • These vouchers could only be used

  • in designated United Fruit commissaries.

  • So they're not actually making real money here.

  • So wait, now the United fruit Company has its own currency?

  • Oh, and they also had like a private Navy,

  • 93 boats called the Great White Fleet.

  • Then eventually they started using these boats

  • to transport people on cruises.

  • These boats were even used during World War II.

  • United Fruit started to look like a literal government.

  • They had their hands in everything so much so

  • that they earned their self the nickname El Pulpo,

  • which means the octopus in Spanish,

  • meaning they had their tentacles in everything

  • all over Central America, the land, the crops, the people,

  • the infrastructure, and soon enough government agencies.

  • Soon these countries became so dominated by

  • and reliant on the United Fruit Company

  • that they were no longer run

  • by the people or the governments.

  • They were run by American banana companies

  • who had all the power and leverage in the world.

  • This led to the nickname Banana Republic,

  • which is a politically unstable country whose society is

  • exploited for profit for one single product,

  • in this case bananas.

  • And probably not the best sort of thing to name

  • your clothing store after,

  • but just a thought, but like who made that decision?

  • United Fruit and other banana companies

  • continued to grow and control Central America.

  • Eventually people got tired of this.

  • In 1911, Honduras was like, all right, we're done,

  • banana companies.

  • We're going to take back our land.

  • We can take it from here. These are our plantations.

  • You've gone too far. Banana companies didn't like this.

  • So they organized a private army to help overthrow the

  • government so that they could put in a president

  • that they liked who would allow them

  • to keep doing exactly what they

  • were doing and also give them a tax break.

  • So yeah,

  • banana companies are now overthrowing governments.

  • Jeez.

  • This kept happening.

  • Anytime there was political dissent or the governments

  • of these countries started to step up and say no,

  • the banana companies would intervene,

  • and guess who had their back?

  • The US military, and yes,

  • we're back to Teddy Roosevelt.

  • Teddy Roosevelt.

  • What a guy.

  • Here's Teddy stomping around the

  • Caribbean with his big stick,

  • making sure that American military and business interests

  • are protected, in Honduras alone,

  • the US invaded seven times in the early 1900s,

  • all in the name of protecting these banana companies

  • and other US interests

  • from having to face these pesky locals

  • who were so audacious as to want to run their own country.

  • How dare they?

  • If you remember that at this time,

  • the US was starting to get really comfortable with empire

  • behavior and central America

  • was at the top of the priority list.

  • The banana companies knew this,

  • which allowed them to feel emboldened,

  • to just sort of do whatever they wanted in the region.

  • But this is sort of child's play.

  • It started to get a lot worse in the 1920s.

  • (upbeat music)

  • There was a situation in Colombia where a bunch of workers

  • for the United Fruit Company decided to stop working

  • and protest their working conditions.

  • They were asking for a few things like, I don't know,

  • working six days a week instead of seven,

  • or getting paid real money.

  • The United Fruit Company refuses to negotiate with them.

  • And instead goes to the US and says, hey, USA,

  • we've got these really annoying workers who are

  • trying to unionize and trying to get paid and stuff.

  • And it actually smells a lot like communism.

  • And the US is like, wait, what, communism?

  • Tell me more.

  • So then the US threatens to invade

  • with their Marines and squash this strike

  • if the Colombian military doesn't do something first.

  • Reminder that we're not talking about

  • some big political revolution or rebellion.

  • We're talking about a few workers in a banana plantation

  • protesting for more humane conditions.

  • And yet this was a priority for the US government

  • to put pressure on Colombia to fix the situation.

  • Of course, Columbia didn't want to make the US angry.

  • So they responded and sent in their own troops

  • to go put down this workers' strike.

  • And they were ordered to quote,

  • spare no ammunition.

  • So on December 5th, 1928,

  • these protesters are in the town square

  • in this town in Columbia.

  • And the Colombian army shows up and massacres them.

  • Men, women, and children were killed by their own military

  • all because an American banana company

  • didn't want to pay them a decent wage.

  • I mean, this is madness.

  • It is madness to think that these large geopolitical forces

  • were coming to bear over a banana plantation.

  • This event is called the Banana Massacre.

  • This didn't stop in 1928,

  • fast forward to Guatemala in the 1950s.

  • At this point,

  • the United Fruit Company, El Pulpo,

  • is making major profits.

  • They own almost 50% of the land in Guatemala tax-free.

  • But this president, Jacobo Arbenz,

  • who was democratically elected is trying to change things.

  • He wants to take land that United Fruit owns

  • but isn't using and redistribute it to poor Guatemalans.

  • He's sort of doing like a Robin Hood thing,

  • trying to like lift poor Guatemalans out of poverty.

  • But of course, United Fruit didn't like this,

  • but instead of engaging directly

  • with the Guatemalan government,

  • United Fruit goes to the white house

  • and says those magic words again, communism.

  • United Fruit then hired this PR magician

  • who happened to be Sigmund Freud's nephew.

  • And he worked with news agencies to create a bunch

  • of fake stories that linked Arbenz,

  • the president of Guatemala to communism,

  • completely fake news.

  • And not just like using that word lightly,

  • like he created a fake Guatemalan newspaper,

  • created all these fake reports

  • and then distributed those fake newspapers to Congress.

  • He planted the seeds in their minds

  • that United Fruit Company were the good guys

  • and that Arbenz,

  • the democratically elected leader,

  • needed to go because of communism.

  • It totally worked.

  • President Eisenhower,

  • the president of the United States believed all of this.

  • And he sent in the CIA to get Arbenz out of power

  • to protect the banana people once again.

  • It's a classic CIA coup, they go find a bunch of rebels.

  • They give them money and they train them.

  • - [Radio Announcer] Rebels rose to oust

  • Guatemala's red infiltrated government.

  • - They find a leader who wants to be the next president

  • that's friendly to the US and eventually they start

  • broadcasting anti-government propaganda,

  • and they turn Guatemalans against their government

  • with all of this fake news and propaganda.

  • They send the Navy in to block Guatemalan waters.

  • They send some bombs onto Guatemala city,

  • and then they invade.

  • (dramatic music)

  • And then with these trained fighters,

  • they go take over the government,

  • the Guatemalan army surrenders,

  • and the leader of the rebels becomes

  • the new president friendly to the United States.

  • And now the banana companies are happy and they have a guy

  • in power that is their guy.

  • It's like they have a playbook on how to

  • mess with democracies around the world.

  • And they just sort of followed the playbook.

  • They're like, oh, we've done this before.

  • We're going to do it again in Iran in a little bit.

  • This is classic CIA coup, by the way,

  • this coup was sort of a death blow

  • to democracy in Guatemala.

  • It divided and destroyed the budding civil society

  • that has not allowed Guatemala to recover since,

  • all because these banana companies

  • wanted to control the supply chain.

  • These things leave scars, major scars,

  • major marks on a country, scars that are still felt today.

  • Let's switch gears for a second because all of these

  • banana coups and banana republics

  • and massacres is like horrendous.

  • But during all of this violence

  • and military invasions and human rights violations,

  • all of this meant that the United Fruit Company

  • was getting really, really good at their business.

  • They were sending too many bananas to the United States.

  • There was a ton of bananas supplied,

  • but demand wasn't rising fast enough.

  • The average American didn't totally know how to use bananas.

  • So the United Fruit Company

  • creates this amazing marketing campaign.

  • (upbeat music)

  • So now they're paying doctors to write amazing

  • academic journal articles about bananas.

  • They cut a deal with Kellogg's to market the cereal

  • as something that pairs with bananas,

  • which is something I still do today.

  • I cut up my bananas and I put them in my cereal

  • because of this campaign.

  • They targeted moms with small children.

  • They made recipe books.

  • They even created a guide on how to decorate with bananas.

  • - [TV Broadcaster] Bananas can to be served

  • in many different and many attractive ways.

  • Blended with fruits, nuts, and gelatin,

  • they provide high food value with nourishment.

  • - But their biggest success was Miss Chiquita.

  • ♪ I'm Chiquita Banana and I've come to say

  • bananas have to ripen in a certain way. ♪

  • And when they're flecked with brown and have a golden hue

  • Bananas taste the best and are the best for you. ♪

  • - The American public fell in love

  • with this lady and bananas.

  • They had no idea that these bananas

  • that were being produced and shipped and bought with blood,

  • they just liked how they taste.

  • But isn't that the case with a lot of things

  • that we all consume every day.

  • But there's one thing that US imperialism and millions of

  • dollars of marketing cannot control, which is disease.

  • This is the part of the story that I tell you

  • that the bananas that were all the rage

  • during the 1900s are not the bananas

  • that you're eating today.

  • (upbeat music)

  • Part of United Fruit Company's efforts to control everything

  • was standardizing the genetics of the banana,

  • making them all exactly the same.

  • Monocultures is what we call that.

  • The problem with monocultures is that they are heaven

  • for a disease because you don't have to solve

  • the same puzzle to infect another banana.

  • If you infect one, you infect them all.

  • And that's exactly what happened.

  • Panama disease was a fungus that came in

  • and destroyed banana plantations.

  • The banana supply in the US shrank rapidly.

  • And there was even a hit song about the banana shortage.

  • We have no bananas today

  • The banana that they had been using,

  • the one that was getting really popular in the US

  • was called the Gros Michel, or the Big Mike banana,

  • but it was now completely getting ravaged by disease.

  • So these banana companies are freaking out.

  • They're like, we are done,

  • we've built this entire empire

  • and this disease is going to wipe us out.

  • So they started to scramble to find another banana.

  • It turns out there's like

  • a thousand types of bananas out there.

  • There's red ones and blue ones and teal ones.

  • I mean, a blue banana.

  • I feel like I have to eat a blue banana

  • at some point in my life, but here's the problem.

  • Us Americans, we buy our food kind of with our eyes first.

  • We're just like, it needs to look good.

  • And so these companies realized they couldn't

  • send a blue banana to the United States.

  • They needed a banana that looked similar, yellow,

  • sweet and seedless so that they could keep selling to

  • Americans who hopefully wouldn't notice the switch.

  • Enter our friend, the Cavendish banana

  • God save the precious queen

  • Like I said at the beginning,

  • this banana was invented by a British guy who was tinkering

  • with banana seeds in this amazing looking house

  • in Northern England.

  • And after years of playing around with the genetics,

  • the plant finally flowered and popped out this big,

  • beautiful yellow banana.

  • And so he named it after the Duke William Cavendish.

  • So now here's the sad part.

  • The Gros Michel,

  • the one that had caught on that was like the big hit in

  • America was a way better banana,

  • is a way better banana.

  • It is sweeter.

  • It's more durable and it's just overall a better banana

  • compared to the Cavendish.

  • In fact,

  • the artificial banana flavor that we have in our candies,

  • like Laffy Taffy comes from the original Gros Michel,

  • not from the Cavendish,

  • but the Gros Michel was getting destroyed by this disease.

  • And the Cavendish was luckily resistant to the disease.

  • So the dictator banana companies made the switch and hoped

  • that the people wouldn't care or notice

  • as long as they looked the same.

  • And guess what? It totally worked.

  • They quietly switched out the banana to the new Cavendish

  • and people just kept buying bananas.

  • I mean,

  • I can't believe that there is a better banana out there

  • that I have not tasted.

  • I wonder if I can get my hands on one.

  • (upbeat music)

  • The Gros Michel banana still exists.

  • It's just a select few people on this planet still grow it.

  • And I found a farm that sent me a few.

  • I'm going to try this thing.

  • Gros Michel. Let's do this

  • Beautiful banana. Wow.

  • I'm obviously primed to like this more

  • so I don't know if I'm really liking it more,

  • but it's definitely a better banana right now in my mind.

  • Slightly different color.

  • It's got this like burgundy vibe going on.

  • It's sweeter. I like the texture more.

  • I think this is a better banana.

  • Too bad this thing got completely wiped out by a disease.

  • So let's get up to speed before we finish the story off,

  • because the last part of it is quite interesting

  • and applies to our modern day.

  • To summarize,

  • came to the US, predatory companies invaded whole countries

  • to help the US exploit them for bananas

  • while using amazing marketing to keep demand up.

  • And because of this Panama Disease,

  • they had to switch to the inferior Cavendish banana.

  • So where do we go from here?

  • United fruit eventually rebranded to Chiquita.

  • They're still doing some pretty shady stuff

  • like paying millions of dollars to terrorist

  • death squads and getting sued by workers

  • who've become sterile after handling pesticides.

  • Banana companies will probably always do this.

  • Because the other thing that remains

  • is that bananas are still soft and

  • spoil quickly and grow in far away places

  • from where you eat them.

  • So the entire supply chain needs to be controlled.

  • And the other thing that hasn't changed is that the new

  • banana is genetically optimized

  • so that every banana is exactly the same.

  • So it fits perfectly into these boxes,

  • into these crates, onto these ships,

  • into these supermarkets.

  • But guess what? There's another disease.

  • The Panama disease,

  • the one that wiped out the Gros Michel,

  • it's back and it's mutated,

  • and it's coming for the Cavendish.

  • And what's tricky about these diseases is there's no way to

  • detect them before they arrive before it's too late.

  • It just quietly kills the banana trees

  • and makes it impossible to ever grow there again,

  • you have to burn the entire plantation.

  • This is already happening in the Philippines,

  • which is the second largest exporter of bananas,

  • the disease has devastated the land and the banana economy.

  • It's making its way through Asia.

  • But Asia is super far away and it's like,

  • there's a whole ocean in between.

  • All our bananas come from Latin America. Wrong.

  • In 2019,

  • it was detected in Colombia.

  • And in April of this year, just a few months ago,

  • the disease was found in Peru, right next to Ecuador,

  • which is the largest exports of bananas that come to the US.

  • It's coming for your bananas.

  • So everyone's on high alert and bananas

  • as we know them might be doomed.

  • So now we're seeing history kind of repeat itself.

  • We're looking at the potential collapse

  • of a $25 billion industry and entire economies,

  • which is like hundreds of thousands of jobs.

  • (dramatic music)

  • To me, the big problem here,

  • the thing that's repeating itself is the same problem

  • of United Fruit Company going in and trying to control

  • every angle of their production to maximize profits.

  • When we have companies that feel emboldened

  • to do whatever it takes to make the most profit,

  • you're going to get situations like this,

  • whether it is banana massacres in Columbia

  • or a coup in Honduras

  • or a monoculture that gets wiped out by disease

  • time and time again,

  • we try to engineer our way out of these problems

  • and we sometimes do, but at the end of the day,

  • nature will catch up with us.

  • And as long as we ignore the true cost of these economies,

  • the cost to people, to democracies, to ecologies,

  • we're never actually going to get rid of these problems.

  • Thanks for watching.

  • I'm going to eat a Cavendish now.

  • See you.

- [Man] The American nation can not,

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