Giant pupusas, a most important issue in Central America, and deforestation in the Amazon

In this episode of 4 from the South, Steve and Fab go over the world's biggest pupusa, urgent problems in Honduras and El Salvador, and a problem that affects us all: deforestation in the Amazon rainforest.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:18):
Hello, Welcome back, everybody. We're here on four from the South.
I'm Steve Healey and I'm here with my co host
f Brizio. Are everyone glad to be back in the show.
We're back in the show. We're back at you with
some more wonderful content. Okay, so today we're gonna have
stories from South America. Are big Latin America, as we
always do in the show. We're gonna talk about the

(00:39):
world's biggest papoosa. That's huge. We're gonna talk about the
election in Honduras could have enormous implications for the world
of charter cities. I just learned about that. Today you're
gonna try and bring up to speed. We're going to
talk about the deforestation of the Amazon. Turns out that's
still happening. It's been a problem since I was a kid,
maybe worse than ever. There's a lot to get through.

(00:59):
Let's get right to it. Will start with the most
important story. I saw this one on l A Taco,
a great website where they keep track of the different
tacos and taco related culture here in l A. But
I have bad news for the town of olo quit
La in El Salvador because they sent the Guinness Book

(01:19):
of World Records for the biggest papoosa in the world
at fourteen ft across. I guess we measured this in
feet across diameter of papoosa, not pounds or how many
people can feed. But well, uh, Saint Salvador has beaten you.
They're up to fifteen feet across one thousand, five thirty
five pounds of massa Queso beans and teach your own.

(01:42):
They made an enormous papoosa. What is it about big foods.
It's always since I was a kid, you'd be hearing
about the Guinness Book of World Record. Somebody's making the
biggest list, the biggest that I think this this is
a way for little towns to be like, we're still here.
It's always like, because it's in the happening in Manhattan
is not happening in Hong Kong. You don't hear no, no, no, no,

(02:07):
Hong Kong. If you try to do this, you'd be executed, exactly.
They will be legal. But doing that in a little
town is a way to the eyes of the world
be like, hey, what we can read the name of
a little town that no one cares for decades? Uh,
and just for a minute, they will feel uh yeah,
that they care to the world community. So that's why

(02:28):
it brings people together. Yea, it brings people together. It's
really happy, like this is happy. If you see the pictures,
it always like excitement, like people are so happy to
be around this big piece of food. I think, I
think it's great. I think it's great. And once again,
but pushes are delicious. I think we all can agree
on that, uh totally. What is what is funny about

(02:50):
papusas is like how with slightly difference, it's like the
same food in every country of Latin America we have
like the same thing with variations of course, but still
it is like papoosa. It's and in Venezuela, it's like
the the what's the name of the thing that they
love that is exactly the name? Yeah, I mean we

(03:13):
in Chile we have like one thing with so by b. Yes,
that is like very similar. So once again, it's like
we just have the same ingredients. We came out with
the same solution. Do you know why, because it's the
best is the best in every country. You get some corn,
you get some cheese. I mean I'm actually surpar I
think the papoosa still has a lot of room to grow.

(03:34):
If I'm like a tech investor or something and somebody's
gonna disrupt the papoosa game, I'm interested because the taco
here in l A and I think in uh, most
of the United States, the taco is still totally dominant.
But we grow a lot of corn here. We could
make a little corn cakes just as easily as we
make flour tacos. I don't know. I think there's an
opportunity here. Why is there no papoosa bell I don't know.

(03:57):
I feel like we we we just hit something big
in this spot in this episode. Maybe we should start. Actually,
let's stop talking about this publicly. Someone's going to steal
our idea. So let's just say, yeah, you know, a
great job to the town of South Salvador, congrats on
the huge papoosa. Don't worry about it. We definitely aren't
gonna be trying to bring the papoosa across the United States. Okay,

(04:19):
so fab last time on the show, or it may
have been one episode ago, depending on how these are
coming out, but we were talking about the election in Honduras.
There's a guy there was a coup in Honduras. The
United States was on the side of the coup. A
right wing guy ended up in charge. The right wing
guys brother has been indicted for smuggling huge amounts of
cocaine in the United States. It seems like maybe the

(04:41):
brother the president is also involved. However, now there's been
an election in Honduras and we're going to have a
new president. Well, it seems like you're still counting votes.
Takes them a long time, and it looks like it's
going to be a lot a little bit of a
fight between the old government and the you government. Looks
like they're not going to be so easily saying that

(05:03):
hege you guys want. And that made me think, like
when you live in a country like that, and this
happened at all over South America, so annoying, you know,
you you you just want to have a life, and
then every three years, every two years, you have to
start all over again. You know, you just have to
like read I think the names of government and rethink
government and like it's it's too much work. That's that's

(05:26):
my problem with like the oldest Like what's going on
in Peru is very similar and I mean in a
different way now they want to try to step down
the president of Peru already happened five times in three years.
Why you keep going with this direction? But I think
howdas will will work? I have I have faith in
this time will work. That's a great point, fab you know,

(05:47):
like the restarting all the time. I was just the
other day YouTube offered me an advertisement and it was
because YouTube knows I've been every once in a while,
I try and learn how to play the guitar. And
they showed me an ad from a guitar teacher who's
basically saying, like you know, who learns how to play
the tar, people who practice every single day, and if
you stop, then you keep having to go back and
you reset. And it seems like Latin American countries this
often happens. Like every time there's an election, you've got

(06:09):
to start the country all over again. There's a new constitution,
there's a new whole system of doing things instead of
just plotting along, uh compounding your gains. As the US, well,
we were veering away from that, but it's been a
successful path for us for a while to basically not
worry about it too much. An election usually gets settled

(06:29):
and then you move on, and especially for every kind
of business. I think everyone would try to do something
in a country, then you have to like, oh, what
about taxes now? How much I'm gonna have to pay
in the next government, or what's going to happen in
the next government about that? Or this? I don't know.
It's a nigmare. I happened to see though. This is

(06:59):
a sort of internet guy. Uh. He's a host of
Charter Cities podcast. Our fellow podcaster. His name is Mark Louter,
and he was decrying on Twitter the Honduran election because
he said it would be a setback for the charter
cities movement. Now, I was a little new to the
idea of charter cities, but it seems like something similar
in Honduras is happening to what is going on in

(07:21):
El Salvador, where there are rich people from the United States,
Europe elsewhere who have kind of wacky ideas for experiments
they'd like to try on government, like replacing the currency
with bitcoin or having cities that are like totally autonomous,
and they find they team up with a right wing
leader in a place like Honduras or El Salvador who
needs money, likes getting money, likes having foreign supports, sees

(07:43):
that as a good way to stay in power, and
they team up and they sort of turn their country
over to these weird libertarian eccentrics for their unusual experiments
as dangerous trend. I think, yeah, I mean, because these
people are like I don't know, people from eater to
have crazy ads and then one day they find some

(08:03):
budget and they just you know, pay a government to
try to impose this crazy tweet or tweets, this crazy
tweets into legislation. So that's the problem here. We have
like crazy yeah us uh jerks go into small countries
and trying to experiment with the life of these people.

(08:24):
And once again it's like if you're there, most be
so annoying, so annoying that they changed the currency. Can
you imagine that you have a business, you try to
do something from you there, you make a living, and
now you have to three think the way you pay
they pay or someone. It's is a nymor I mean,
I don't have to learn about bitcoin, And I still
think like it's a little annoying that I have to

(08:45):
learn about bitcoin just because it's something people talk about.
But nobody's making me use it. If I lived to
know Salvador and it was like, okay, you have now
you have to learn what bitcoin is just to like
buy stuff in a store and pay your taxes, I'd
be highly aggravated. That would be irritating. On the other hand,
if I'm gonna experimental, weird American guy, all I have
to do is team up with the with the right
wing guy who's got the run of the of some

(09:07):
country or another, and I can test out pretty much
whatever I want. I mean, I see the opportunity here,
but I see how it's working for all the principal actors.
Uh well, once again, I think we hit two businesses
in the in one episode. We have the improved with
the Pappusa, the Pappusa startupp and then yeah, it's like
a micro governments micromanaging governments in the out in the

(09:31):
in Latin America. Essentially. Yeah, okay, maybe the two could
team up. We could start a country that's based on
the Papoosa or something Papoosa towns. Uh yeah, I see
opportunities here. Um, so we should think about which I mean,
I haven't heard about anybody messing with like believe by
the way, this is a this is a good question.

(09:52):
Maybe if someone in our audience can can can have
the answer. There's any cryptocurrency base in l A t
new thing, you know, like um, I don't know, like
the Papoosa trip to a Pusa. I'm just saying like, yeah, well,
Miami coin might be the closest. Miami coin might be
the closest. You're right, but we need something that I
don't know. I'm just gonna throw it, like condo Rito

(10:14):
coin or you know some some Latino things. I mean,
reggaeton coin with the amount here like this guys, certain
reggae coins. Yeah, I think it will work. I mean
I think of all the business this is our third
now business idea we've come up in less than ten
minutes of podcast. But I think this is the best.
Paine always your third idea, because if you create a

(10:39):
crypto coin, you're creating nothing. You don't have to create
anything because some computers somewhere nobody's gonna check it. So
you create a nothing. All you have to do is
convince people that it's good and they'll give you some
money to buy it. So you just need a little
celebrity to just sort of launch it. So I don't know,
maybe we need to team up with I don't know
who would be the right person to team up with.

(11:00):
Jav Alden. He's he's he's a hot dog guy. I
don't know. If we remember a couple of episodes, a
guy about the Reggaeton wars. Yeah, he's he's the hot
duck stand musician. He won the wait. He was the
guy who was accused of being the hot dog standard.
He was the other know, he was accused of being
the hot dog one. Okay, so he needs a win.

(11:20):
He needs us as much as we need him, exactly.
Pretty good opportunity there. I can see a business here, Okay,
fat slightly depressing story coming out of Latin America and

(11:43):
South America. Yeah, well, in a way, I don't know,
because I wasn't trying to make it. This one I
was looking at a report was from Brazil's National Space
Research Agency and um they announced that thirteen thousand, two
hundred kilometers of the Amazon had been deforested just in
the last year. Wow. Now for context, I looked into
that that's about the size of the state of Connecticut,

(12:06):
So pretty big chunk of territory has been deforested. I
was thinking here, okay, since I was a kid, But
in fact, when I was about ten years old, we
were talking about it all the time. We gotta save
the rainforest, destroying the rainforest. Nothing has happened like it's worse,
accelerating destroying the rainforest. We don't even really talk about

(12:27):
it anymore. We've moved on to this sort of existential
concept of climate change in general. But man, I don't know.
I mean, maybe that means that we didn't need to
worry about it. Ever, It's fine, it's gonna happen. They're
gonna tear down the Amazon, no big deal, whatever, be
a lot fewer bugs and snakes, but okay, whatever, what
do you think about this? What are people saying in
Latin America about the Amazon? Everywhere in the world, no

(12:49):
one's talking about this, No one cares, And yeah, that's
part of the problem. I remember like there was a
moment maybe during like the Bolts Snaro first year, where
people were like, oh, this grazy. Do kill still doing
this and making it worse? Uh? And once again, then
we all move on. I I retweet all those comments,
so I feel like I did my part. But once again,

(13:11):
it wasn't enough to stop him. And one, I mean
I think this is part of like why why we're
in this trouble. It's like I remember watching them his
Al Gore documentary, the first part an important What was
what was the name of this? Yeah, that was called
an inconvenient an inconvenient truth, and I remember terrible titles. Yeah,

(13:32):
impossible to remember. And he said yeah. So at some
point he's like, hey, guys, you remember like the whole
in the atmosphere. We fixed that, you know, we we
solved that problem. Remember there was a hole and everyone's
like the whole, the whole, and then we feel the
whole who is gun? And that gave me hope, Like okay, yeah,

(13:55):
I mean that means like it's it's it's you can
reverse some easy ship like that. But it looks like
this time is I mean, we have like twenty holes now,
it looks like there's no way to stop. You know,
there's small holes every minute. So I think it's too late. Yeah,
you need some hope on this one because it's too

(14:16):
like when you've been hearing about this for twenty years
and like the latest news is like, oh, you know,
remember saving the rainforest, not only haven't we saved it,
we're destroying it faster than we ever have. Even back
when you were tending it was a crisis, it's way
worse now. So just I mean that that just puts
you in an attitude of like, well, at some point,
I gotta stop. Just I mean, I think like a humans,
like the whole planet is like in a state of

(14:39):
uh when when when you when you're so obsessed with
something and you you you're getting an addictive mood. You know,
you're in a like eating old the chocolate even like
you know that you're getting said and you're getting sick,
and you're you're like, I can't stop eating this, and yes, yes,
it looks like there's no way to stop that. You know. Yeah,

(14:59):
there's a moment where it's like, okay, like I'm getting
a little unhealthy. I need to stop and start exercising
or something. And then if you cross that moment without
doing anything, then you're in the place where like I'm
a big fat guy and that's my thing, and I'm yeah,
and you need like hard to the biggest loser or
something like you need to like some shocking life experience. Yeah,
that's when you need like one of those guys on

(15:20):
TikTok or something like a former Navy seal that like
yells at you and and pulls you together, and the
beginning of Jordan Peterson for the whole, for the planet Earth. Yeah,
that's what we need. That's what we need. Not al
gore at any convenient truth. No, we need somebody to say,
listen to ask whole. You're ruining the planet, all of you. Well,
you did your part by retweeting, so no one can

(15:43):
accuse you of No, I mean the right side of history.
I think I will go down as a hero. By
the way, I think this right side of history concept
that it didn't help anybody because people are always checking
to see if they're on the right or wrong side
of history, which, by the way, you never know. You know,
history is easy. It's upside down, left and turn and
just took away Thomas Jefferson statue. It's it's gonna change.

(16:07):
You're gonna be on the right and wrong side if
history goes for long enough. It's too long. The history
is too long. So you you yeah, yeah, don't choose
the team, just you know, try to swim and serve
the waves of history. Fab Thanks so much for bringing
us the news here. Really appreciate it. You can hit
us up on Twitter and Gmail for From the South
and let us know what's going on in your corner

(16:27):
of Big Latin America. Okay, goodbye, thank you guys, Bye bye.
Four from the South is hosted by Me, Steve Healey
and from Brizio Capano. Robert O'Shaughnessy is our producer. Original
theme song by Amy Stolsenbach. Four from the South is
a production of Exile Content Studio in partnership with I
Heart Radio is Michael Tour podcast Network. For more podcasts
from my Heart because of the I Heart Radio app,

(16:47):
Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite ships.