On today’s episode, we consider one of history’s greatest mistakes: The 4 pests campaign of the Great Leap Forward of Communist China, and specifically at the killing of billions of sparrows, which contributed to a one of the largest and most devastating famines in human history.

What is a counterfactual? At it’s most basic, it is a ‘what if’. It’s a way of understanding history as it is by discussing what it could have been.