"Five Minutes of Fire": Foreign Debts, Homeless Vets, AIDS

<v Speaker 1>I'm Jason Colvin, I'm d Graves.
<v Speaker 2>Give us five minutes and we will give you the fire.
<v Speaker 1>Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Surely you Can't
<v Speaker 1>Be Serious Podcast Special Edition five Minutes of Fire. We
<v Speaker 1>are here talking about the lyrics of We Didn't Start
<v Speaker 1>the Fire by Billy Joel. We're covering only five minutes
<v Speaker 1>at a time, which is about to link with the song,
<v Speaker 1>so it works out kind of nicely. So please join
<v Speaker 1>us as we dive into some new lyrics today.
<v Speaker 2>All right, guys, so here are the topics that we're
<v Speaker 2>going to be covering today.
<v Speaker 1>Warn debts, almost vets, aids, debt okay, Jason, tell me
<v Speaker 1>about foreign debts.
<v Speaker 2>Okay. The Latin American debt crisis of nineteen eighty two
<v Speaker 2>originated in the late nineteen seventies when Latin American countries
<v Speaker 2>reached a point where their foreign debt exceeded their earning
<v Speaker 2>power and they could not repay it. A few things
<v Speaker 2>contributed to this, the rise of the international interest rates,
<v Speaker 2>the global economic slow. Latin American countries relied heavily on
<v Speaker 2>raw material exports like oil, minerals and agricultural products. The
<v Speaker 2>global prices began to fall. To make up for this,
<v Speaker 2>the Latin American countries borrowed at higher rates. This put
<v Speaker 2>them in a very risky position. International banks began to
<v Speaker 2>lose confidence in Latin American countries. In nineteen eighty two,
<v Speaker 2>Mexico declared its inability to pay back its debts. Many
<v Speaker 2>countries experienced deep depressions, which led to widespread unemployment, and
<v Speaker 2>it continues to have widespread and lasting effects today. Okay,
<v Speaker 2>do you tell us about homeless vets?
<v Speaker 1>Okay, Veterans being homeless has been a problem in the
<v Speaker 1>US since as early as nineteen thirty two. In nineteen
<v Speaker 1>thirty four, there were as many as a quarter million
<v Speaker 1>veterans living on the streets. During the Truman administration, there
<v Speaker 1>was one hundred thousand homeless vets just in Chicago and
<v Speaker 1>another twenty five thousand in Washington, DC. And then by
<v Speaker 1>nineteen eighty seven the number had reached an epidemic proportion.
<v Speaker 1>It was something in the neighborhood of three hundred thousand
<v Speaker 1>homeless vets. And this became a big concern, and so
<v Speaker 1>they begin to try to not only address the homeless problem,
<v Speaker 1>but they addressed some of the other mental health issues
<v Speaker 1>that go along with veterans being homeless. Typically they suffer
<v Speaker 1>from PTSD anxiety disorder, and they have a lot of
<v Speaker 1>emotional trauma, either involving their the war itself or injuries
<v Speaker 1>that they might have received there. But since nineteen eighty
<v Speaker 1>seven there's been a push to end this problem. It's
<v Speaker 1>not over yet, but in two thousand and seven the
<v Speaker 1>number was down to about one hundred and fifty four thousand.
<v Speaker 1>By two thousand and twelve it was down to around
<v Speaker 1>sixty two thousand, twenty thirteen, down to fifty seven thousand,
<v Speaker 1>two thousand fourteen, down to fifty four thousand, and twenty fifteen,
<v Speaker 1>down to forty seven thousand, So the numbers keep getting
<v Speaker 1>chipped away, but it is still a continuing problem even today,
<v Speaker 1>thirty five years after this song, all Right, Jason aids
<v Speaker 1>all Right.
<v Speaker 2>AIDS AIDS stands for acquired immune to fision syndrome. In
<v Speaker 2>nineteen eighty one in the US, rare forms of pneumonia
<v Speaker 2>and cancer begin being reported in high rates for young
<v Speaker 2>gay men and injection drug users. AIDS we know now
<v Speaker 2>attacks and destroys infection fighting c D four cells in
<v Speaker 2>the body. In nineteen eighty two, it's learned that this
<v Speaker 2>virus can be transmitted sexually and is caused by the
<v Speaker 2>HIV virus. Cases are now being reported by blood transfusion patients.
<v Speaker 2>By nineteen eighty three, women start becoming Effective nineteen eighty five,
<v Speaker 2>the pronouncement of AIDS was like a dessence. In nineteen
<v Speaker 2>eighty six, we learned that women can pass HIV through breastfeeding.
<v Speaker 2>In nineteen ninety eight, to ten million people are estimated
<v Speaker 2>to be living with HIV. The virus was located in blood, semen,
<v Speaker 2>and even saliva, which scared the heck out of everybody.
<v Speaker 2>It's much more treatable now, although there still is no cure.
<v Speaker 2>Famous people who have had HIV include Ready Mercury, reg
<v Speaker 2>Luganis Gia Keurengi, Arthur Ashe, Liberachi, Anthony Perkins, Isaac Asimov,
<v Speaker 2>Danny Pintaro, Robert Reid, Roy Cone, Rock Hudson, Ryan White,
<v Speaker 2>Charlie Sheen, and Magic Johnson.
<v Speaker 1>Okay, guys, that does it for today's episode. Join us
<v Speaker 1>next time for five minutes of fire