India is now the Type 2 diabetes capital of the world, with over 100 million estimated adult cases, and perhaps equally large numbers not yet diagnosed. In some Indian states, the age-specific prevalence of metabolic syndrome among elderly women is as high as 90%. 

Barry Popkin, a nutrition and population expert at the University of North Carolina, suggested that, after economies improve and famine recedes, patterns of food consumption and physical activity shift in ways that promote the emergence of obesity and its cardiovascular and diabetes complications. Basically, we are seeing a Westernization of disease patterns all over the world.

A tsunami of cancer cases related to these shifts in the economy, and patterns of eating and exercising, are likely to affect not just India, but all of the Global South, including Mexico, Brazil, Indonesia and elsewhere.

Chocolate might seem to be our friend. But along with fentanyl, vodka, weed and everything else that takes away our pain, it’s just palliative care.

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05 - Death by Chocolate

Gerry grabs coffee with Aniruddh Kulkarni, cancer researcher at the Indian Institute of Science, to discuss some key public health issues of our times.

What's the impact of imported western lifestyles and dietary habits on non-western bodies? What is relative deprivation and how does it affect our mental health? What can we learn from the incredible progress our species has made against cancer and diabetes in the last few decades?

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04 - Death by chocolate: India's new fight against cancer | Aniruddh Kulkarni

“The Ministry of Peace concerns itself with war, the Ministry of Truth with lies, the Ministry of Love with torture and the Ministry of Plenty with starvation. These contradictions are not accidental, nor do they result from ordinary hypocrisy: they are deliberate exercises in doublethink.”

George Orwell, 1984

Since the Vietnam War, Americans have grown weary of their lying federal government, which has cynically committed troops to vague foreign objectives at great cost in American lives and the lives of civilians who are caught in the wars. Iraq is only a recent example of the betrayal of trust that has been hammered home for decades.

These lies and betrayals come at a high cost in public trust, not only in the political sphere, but in public health, trust of Americans in each other and in the possibilities of the future.

I think we have only just begun to fathom the trust that has been lost, the cost of the cynical and repeated betrayals of the American people by those in power.

//

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03 - Betrayal

“The world is so empty if one thinks only of mountains, rivers & cities; but to know someone who thinks & feels with us, & who, though distant, is close to us in spirit, this makes the earth for us an inhabited garden.” ― Goethe

In the first interview of the Fifth Column podcast, Gerry shares a conversation with Rev. Michael Thompson, an ordained priest, lawyer, activist, and dear friend, about the importance of community in increasingly hostile times, the true biblical message, and taking a stand against the New American Barbarism.

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02 - A Community of Support | Rev. Michael Thompson

The Fifth Column Trailer

“If the father is a hero, the son is a real man. If the father is a reactionary, the son is a bastard. That’s basically how it works.”
A slogan used by Beijing Red Guards, 1966

The Cultural Revolution left lasting wounds in Chinese society, with memories of trauma, loss, isolation and death widespread among survivors.

The MAGA Revolution may yet inflict these terrors on American society. Our only hope is that the millions who oppose this descent into backwardness and madness stand together to resist it.

01 - The Cultural Revolution

The Fifth Column is a weekly wartime journal documenting the erosion of the American Republic through the lenses of history and public health.

Through interviews and creative commentary, we aim to build a space for community, for imagination, and for dissent against the ever-growing shadow of American fasc1sm.

Hosted by Gerald Denis, molecular biologist and cancer researcher based in Boston, Massachusetts.

Gerald Denis

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