China reported a record harvest while 36 million people starved. This is the true story of the lie behind it — and the son who spent 30 years believing it.

In 1959, 18-year-old Yang Jisheng watched the man who raised him die of hunger; while government newspapers, just miles away, reported record harvests. He spent the next 30 years blaming himself, not the system, for what happened.

This episode traces China's Great Leap Forward: the backyard furnaces, the faked harvest numbers, the famine that followed, and the secret decade-long investigation that became Tombstone — the book that documented 36 million deaths and was banned in mainland China the day it was published. Then Sergio and Zaira turn it into a conversation about the beliefs we protect even when the evidence says we shouldn't.

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