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Graphic Truth: Thanksgiving got cheaper!
Although high grocery bills may have contributed to the Democrats’ losses in the US election on Nov. 5, Americans can be grateful that the cost of their upcoming Thanksgiving dinner is, in fact, declining. Prices for the holiday’s traditional staples have fallen for a second consecutive year.
According to the American Farm Bureau Federation, the average cost of a Thanksgiving meal for 10 people is projected to be $58.08 in 2024. That’s 5% lower than last year’s bill of $61.17 and down from a record high of $64.05 in 2022. Still, prices remain 19% higher they were in 2019, on the eve of the pandemic.
Key contributors to this year’s price drop include significant reductions in the costs of sweet potatoes (down 26.2%) and turkey (down 5.6%) after previous spikes. Some items like dinner rolls and fresh cranberries have seen price increases, as have the costs of eggs and chicken, owing to recent outbreaks of bird flu.
The drop in turkey prices is due in part to a decline in demand, as Americans increasingly choose other proteins to be the centerpiece of their meal. As a result, farmers raised only 205 million of the birds in 2024, down 6% from 2023, marking the lowest level since 1985.
Graphic Truth: America's podcast boom
Is 2024 the Podcast Election? For the first time, US presidential candidates are sitting for lengthy interviews on popular podcasts, while doing fewer traditional spots with mainstream media.
Donald Trump, for example, has appeared on pods hosted by, among others, controversial gaming streamer Adin Ross, YouTube influencer Logan Paul, pro-wrestler The Undertaker, comedian and actor Theo Von, computer scientist Lex Fridman and, of course, Joe Rogan, who boasts the largest podcast audience in America.
Those all cater chiefly to young men – no accident given Trump’s focus on that demographic in an election increasingly shaped by notions of gender.
Kamala Harris, meanwhile, has appeared on Alex Cooper’s “Call Her Daddy,” the top women-focused podcast, as well as “Club Shay Shay,” hosted by pro Football hall of famer Shannon Sharpe; “All the Smoke,” hosted by two former NBA champs; and “The Howard Stern Show.”
Whether the vice president too will appear on Rogan is unclear. As of Tuesday, Rogan said she hadn’t met his terms, a striking illustration of the podcaster’s power: Most traditional media would leap to accommodate a sitting VP.
Why the pod? One answer is: In a polarized environment where the credibility of traditional media has cratered, podcasters reach large subcultures of American voters who see them as authentic and trustworthy. And the conversational podcast setup is generally friendlier to candidates than traditional media interviews.
Another answer is: Because lots of people listen to podcasts now. Here’s a graphic showing the staggering growth in podcast listenership since the medium first arose in the mid-2000s, and a breakdown of listenership in 2024 alone.
How will the podcast shape the election? That remains to be heard, as it were – but we, like nearly half of America these days, are listening more closely than ever.Graphic Truth: BRICS economies eclipse the G7
In 2001, a Goldman Sachs economist coined an acronym for the four largest and most promising “emerging market” economies: Brazil, Russia, India, and China became known as the “BRIC” countries.
Five years later, reality imitated art when the countries decided to begin meeting regularly at “BRIC summits,” with the latest occurring in Kazan, Russia, this week. The subsequent inclusion of South Africa upgraded the “s” to a capital letter: the BRICS.
The group, which lacks formal treaties or binding obligations, has always been united more by what it opposes — US dominance of global financial systems — than by what it supports.
After all, it’s a hodgepodge: energy exporters (Brazil and Russia) and importers (China and India), democracies (India and Brazil) and non-democracies (China and Russia), allies (Russia ❤️China) and adversaries (India x China).
But the economic clout of the group is, on paper, formidable. With the addition of Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates this year, the BRICS+ economies account for 36% of global GDP – while the G7 group of wealthy democracies amount to just 29%. But, of course, there’s a catch: China and the US each contribute more than half of their respective group’s GDP.
Here’s a look at the economic size, and breakdown, of the BRICS+ and the G7 group it hopes one day to eclipse — not only economically but also geopolitically.
Graphic Truth: Biggest contributors to UN peacekeeping
UN Peacekeeping is all about helping countries navigate the often rocky transition out of violent conflict, with the hope of laying the groundwork for a lasting peace. For over 70 years, peacekeepers have been deployed around the world to help maintain security, protect civilians and human rights, and oversee peace processes. There are currently 11 active peacekeeping missions around the world.
Canada played a central role in the early development of UN Peacekeeping. In 1957, Canadian Secretary of State for External Affairs Lester B. Pearson was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his vital role in establishing a UN Emergency Force that helped resolve the Suez Crisis of 1956 in Egypt.
UN Peacekeeping is financed by UN member states — and has a budget of roughly $6.4 billion — with countries like the US, China, and Japan among the top financial contributors. Meanwhile, the biggest contributors of personnel to UN Peacekeeping are Bangladesh, Nepal, and India. Do you think UN Peacekeeping is worth all that goes into it? We’d love to hear from you!Graphic Truth: How many countries can fit in China?
China’s population, once the largest in the world, is now gradually shrinking. The problem has become so acute that the authorities last week raised the pension age by up to five years due to fears that there might not be enough working-age people to support the country’s pension system.
Still, even as the world’s second most populous country – India is now first – China boasts a vast population of some 1.4 billion people.
To put that in perspective, the country is home to nearly one out of every five earthlings.
In fact, of China’s nearly three dozen primary administrative districts, the two most populous – Guangdong and Shandong – alone contain more people than 99% of other entire countries.
Here is a look at China’s provinces expressed (give or take a few million people) as the populations of other entire countries.
For more on the challenge that China faces in maintaining its population, see here.Graphic Truth: Hurricanes US and Canada
The 2024 Atlantic hurricane season is shaping up to be exceptionally active, with forecasts predicting 17-25 named storms, including 8-13 hurricanes and 4-7 major hurricanes. This surge in activity is driven by unusually warm Atlantic waters and El Niño conditions.
Hurricanes are becoming increasingly expensive for the US, with recent storms like Ian in 2022 and Ida in 2021 causing over $113 billion and $75 billion in damages, respectively. This trend is exacerbated by climate change, which intensifies storms and raises sea levels, amplifying coastal flooding.
Graphic Truth: Big bombs get big budgets in 2023
The world’s nuclear powers increased their spending on these apocalyptic weapons by a record 13% between 2022 and 2023, according to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons. Cumulatively, they spent a cool $91.4 billion on building, maintaining, and researching nuclear weapons.
Well over half of that spending came from the United States, to the tune of $51 billion. The next highest spenders were China and Russia, with comparatively frugal expenditures of $11 billion and $8 billion, respectively. The increases were not driven by building new weapons — arsenal levels remained fairly stable, according to a different study by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute — but instead by developing new technology to target and launch the weapons.
The US and UK, which saw the largest increases in nuclear spending, are developing new rockets and submarines that they hope will help deter attacks. The US, UK, Russia, China, France, India, and North Korea are also reportedly developing so-called hypersonic missiles, which can travel over five times the speed of sound to avoid interception.
That amount of spending comes to $2,898 every second — roughly what the average global household makes in three months. As if spending vast amounts on weapons that could effectively end the world in about two hours wasn't tragic enough, in countries like North Korea and Pakistan, endemic poverty and economic stagnation mean every dollar spent on nukes is one less spent on food, fuel, and medicine.
The Graphic Truth: America's racial wealth gap
Juneteenth celebrates June 19, 1865, the day the last Black slaves in America were emancipated after the end of the Civil War. In the century and a half since, segregation, Jim Crow laws, and other forms of overt discrimination against Blacks have all contributed to a persistent wealth gap between Black and non-Black Americans. Here, we take a look at a few indicators that illustrate the divide.