The Great Starvation Experiment was conducted by Ansel Keys at the University of Minnesota. The men were put on starvation diets and forced to steal food from elderly women in order to survive. One man, Sam Leg, lost several fingers after getting his axe caught up in a tree while chopping wood. He says he doesn't know if he was mentally ill when he removed the fingers but thinks it was an accident.
We’re sharing a bonus episode from another Pushkin podcast, Revisionist History. Revisionist History is Malcolm Gladwell’s podcast about things misunderstood and overlooked. This season, Malcolm’s obsessed with experiments – natural experiments, scientific experiments, thought experiments. In this episode, Revisionist History examines the testimony of 18 men who took part in an astonishing experiment at the University of Minnesota during the Second World War. Revisionist History takes you through the tapes, and asks why people are still arguing over the Minnesota experiment 75 years later.
You can hear more from Revisionist History at https://podcasts.pushkin.fm/rhs7?sid=thl
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