As we learned last week, starvation extends far beyond hunger and what a lack of food does to the human body. Similarly, famine is much more than a food shortage and starvation on a population-level scale. This week, we’re picking up where we left off last episode to explore the definitions, drivers, and many dimensions of famine. We trace famines throughout human history, asking how they have changed either in their incidence, severity, or cause. No two famines are exactly alike, but taking a bird’s eye view of patterns in famine over time gives us insight, especially into the famines of the past 100 years. We conclude the episode with a discussion of the ongoing famine in Gaza and other food insecurity crises in other regions of the world. Tune in for a broad overview of this heavy but incredibly important topic.
| History | Biology |
| Applebaum, Anne. Red famine: Stalin’s war on Ukraine. Vintage, 2017. | Firsthand excerpted from: “Too hungry to think, too weak to sit upright, concentration slips away: the struggle to stay focuses as an academic in Gaza” by Ahmed Kamal Junina published in The Guardian on August 19, 2025. https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2025/aug/19/too-hungry-to-think-too-weak-to-sit-upright-concentration-slips-away-the-struggle-to-stay-focussed-as-an-academic-in-gaza |
| De Waal, Alex. Mass starvation: The history and future of famine. John Wiley & Sons, 2017. | Famine Review Committee: Gaza Strip, August 2025. Conclusions and Recommendations. IPC https://www.ipcinfo.org/fileadmin/user_upload/ipcinfo/docs/IPC_Famine_Review_Committee_Report_Gaza_Aug2025.pdf |
| Gráda, Cormac Ó. Famine: A Short History. Princeton University Press, 2009. | Famine Review Committee: Sudan, December 2024. Conclusions and recommendations IPC. https://www.ipcinfo.org/fileadmin/user_upload/ipcinfo/docs/IPC_Famine_Review_Committee_Report_Sudan_Dec2024.pdf |
| Sen, Amartya. Poverty and famines: an essay on entitlement and deprivation. Oxford university press, 1982. | Hassoun, A., Hamad, A., Iriqat, D., Nijim, M., Bouchikh, Y., Buheji, M. and Aldahdouh, T.Z., 2025. The implications of the ongoing war on Gaza for food sustainability. Sustainable Futures, p.100473. |
| Woodham-smith, Cecil. The Great Hunger. (1962): 385-pp. | IPC analysis portal. Sudan: acute food insecurity situation – updated projections and FRC conflusions for October 2024 to May 2025. https://www.ipcinfo.org/ipc-country-analysis/details-map/en/c/1159433/ |
| Conley, Bridget, and Alex De Waal. “The purposes of starvation: Historical and contemporary uses.” Journal of International Criminal Justice 17.4 (2019): 699-722. | WHO. Public health situation analysis: May 5,2025. Crisis in Upper Nile State, South sudan. https://www.who.int/publications/m/item/public-health-situation-analysis—upper-nile-state–south-sudan |
| de Waal, Alex. “The history and future of famine.” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Food Studies. 2024. | WHO Sudan Conflict and refugee crisis: multi-country external situation report no 10, March- April 2025. https://www.who.int/publications/m/item/sudan-conflict-and-refugee-crisis–multi-country-external-situation-report–10–covering-the-reporting-period-march-april-2025 |
| Heijmans, Bastiaan T., et al. “Persistent epigenetic differences associated with prenatal exposure to famine in humans.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 105.44 (2008): 17046-17049. | WHO Public health situation analysis: March 10, 2025. Sudan Conflict. https://www.who.int/publications/m/item/public-health-situation-analysis–sudan-conflict-(10-march-2025) |
| Howe, Paul, and Stephen Devereux. “Famine intensity and magnitude scales: a proposal for an instrumental definition of famine.” Disasters 28.4 (2004): 353-372. | WHO Public health situation analysis: September 10,2025 – Hostilities in the occupied Palestinian territory. https://www.who.int/publications/m/item/public-health-situation-analysis—occupied-palestinian-territory-September |
| Shirinian, George N. “Starvation and its political use in the Armenian Genocide.” Genocide Studies International 11.1 (2017): 8-37. | UN News. August 5, 2025 Children are ‘skin and bones’ as Sudan marks a grim milestone. UN News Global perspective Human stories. https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/08/1165580 |
| Tezanos‐Vázquez, Sergio. “Why do famines still occur in the 21st Century? A review on the causes of extreme food insecurity.” Journal of Economic Surveys 39.4 (2025): 1433-1461. | Botty and Chothia, July 4 2025. Sudan war: a simple guide to what is happening. BBC news: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cjel2nn22z9o |
| Vaiserman, Alexander, and Oleh Lushchak. “Prenatal famine exposure and adult health outcomes: an epigenetic link.” Environmental Epigenetics 7.1 (2021): dvab013. | August 8, 2025 Israel and the Palestinians: History of the conflict explained. BBC news: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckgr71z0jp4o |
| Vanhaute, Eric. “From famine to food crisis: what history can teach us about local and global subsistence crises.” The Journal of peasant studies 38.1 (2011): 47-65. | Graham-Harrison. July 31,2025. The mathematics of starvation: how Israel caused a famine in Gaza. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jul/31/the-mathematics-of-starvation-how-israel-caused-a-famine-in-gaza |
| Zimmet, Paul, et al. “Epidemic T2DM, early development and epigenetics: implications of the Chinese Famine.” Nature Reviews Endocrinology 14.12 (2018): 738-746. | WFP. Emergency – Sudan. https://www.wfp.org/emergencies/sudan |
| Integrated Food Security Phase Classification | Philips. Oct 17,2023 . Gaza strip size compared to major world cities in maps. https://www.newsweek.com/gaza-strip-size-compared-world-cities-maps-1835267 |
| IPC Famine Fact Sheet | Burke. Sept 6, 2025. More than 7,000 under-fives in Gaza put in malnutrition recovery in two-week period. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/sep/06/unicef-under-5s-recovery-programmes-acute-malnutrition-gaza |
| IPC GAZA STRIP: Famine confirmed in Gaza Governorate, projected to expand | 1 July – 30 September 2025 Published on 22 August 2025 | Khatib, R., McKee, M. and Yusuf, S., 2024. Counting the dead in Gaza: difficult but essential. The Lancet, 404(10449), pp.237-238. |
| Dardona, Z., Amane, M., Dardona, A. and Boussaa, S., 2025. Health and environmental impacts of Gaza conflict (2023-2024): A review. One Health Bulletin, 5(1), pp.1-12. | |
| Boukari, Y., Kadir, A., Waterston, T., Jarrett, P., Harkensee, C., Dexter, E., Cinar, E.N., Blackett, K., Nacer, H., Stevens, A. and Devakumar, D., 2024. Gaza, armed conflict and child health. BMJ Paediatrics Open, 8(1), p.e002407. | |
| Elamin, A., Abdullah, S., ElAbbadi, A., Abdellah, A., Hakim, A., Wagiallah, N. and Ansah, J.P., 2024. Sudan: from a forgotten war to an abandoned healthcare system. BMJ Global Health, 9(10), p.e016406. | |
| Venkatesan, P., 2025. Burden of infectious diseases in Sudan. The Lancet Microbe, 6(1). | |
| Reed, R., and Reed, B. 2013. Technical notes on drinking-water, sanitation and hygiene in emergencies. Prepared for WHO by WEDC. https://cdn.who.int/media/docs/default-source/wash-documents/who-tn-09-how-much-water-is-needed.pdf | |
| Herschander, Sept 9, 2025. The US stopped showing up to disasters. The results are horrifying. Vox Future Perfect. https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/460550/emergency-response-afghanistan-sudan-usaid-foreign-aid | |
| WHO/FAO Jount news release. July 28,2025. Global hunger declines, but rises in Africa and western Asia: UN report. https://www.who.int/news/item/28-07-2025-global-hunger-declines-but-rises-in-africa-and-western-asia-un-report |
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