Is

there a way to bridge these two? It's hard because I've had the same thought.

Like to some extent, I kind of wanted Larry, who I talked to from Delaware, to just like make these really good possible, like kind of like tweak the source code of corporations in a way that would make them a bit more pro-social.

But of course, to our point about like how it can get dangerous to kind of like the allure of the kind of central planning, improving things like, okay.

I was doing a lot of this research around the time when like Who was it? Like the governor of Florida got into like a weird...

feud with Disney because I guess Disney was too woke or whatever.

I don't really care to know enough about this, but would I want to live in a world where if Disney was incorporated, let's say Disney was incorporated in Florida, all the major corporations were incorporated in Florida, would I want to live in the world where the governor of Florida could actually threaten to revoke the incorporation status of Disney? Or do you have this lever to pull in which he would then be able to pressure Disney to I don't know, like make sure the race of princesses and Disney movies were the right color.

Does that mean that haircuts are going to keep getting more expensive comparatively? Like, does this mean that like in the same way that Agatha Christie couldn't envision owning a car and not having a maid, like, am I going to get to the point where like my haircut is more expensive than my phone?

Yeah.

It's like every once in a while it's about price, but usually I'm not, like...

I don't have a family of five, and so certainly, like, I notice the amount of money I spend on groceries.

But usually that price difference of, like, going to one places for another is gonna be small enough other than, like, certain exceptions, um, that it's more often just like, "Oh, well, you know, I'm just swinging by a grocery store on my way home to grab some things," and since I could use some lunch stuff and I like the Trader Joe's lunch stuff, then I will also end up grabbing some milk there 'cause that's also what we happen to need or, or what have you.

Mm-hmm.

So you're kind of like, "Okay.

Yeah, it's fine.

It's 4.99." Um, that's a price that, like, I'm used to and I think is normal.

Tell us about that.

Yeah, I mean, I think that was definitely an intentional choice to maybe show people that we were aiming to do something a bit different here and expand their conception of what economics is.

And economics is really about scarce resources and how we allocate them and how we get the most use out of what we have.

And that's what exactly was going on with these food banks, where there was a national network.

that would get large donations.

Let's say maybe like General Mills had a lot of extra product and so they donated it or other companies might do the same.

And then this kind of national organization was connected to all these local food banks.

If we separate the political dynamic that's going on on the tariff front and look at it really through the through the lens of the economy and the economic principles, what does history help us understand about what's going on on the tariff front today?

Tell us about that.

Yeah, I mean, I think that was definitely an intentional choice to maybe show people that we were aiming to do something a bit different here and expand their conception of what economics is.

And economics is really about scarce resources and how we allocate them and how we get the most use out of what we have.

And that's what exactly was going on with these food banks, where there was a national network.

that would get large donations.

Let's say maybe like General Mills had a lot of extra product and so they donated it or other companies might do the same.

And then this kind of national organization was connected to all these local food banks.

If we separate the political dynamic that's going on on the tariff front and look at it really through the through the lens of the economy and the economic principles, what does history help us understand about what's going on on the tariff front today?

Yeah.

You know, Obama's, you know, using his, his, his, uh, BlackBerry.

They're called CrackBerrys because it's the first time people are, like, glued to their phones.

Um, and you know, the only way for, uh, you know, the company behind BlackBerry to keep selling them in Argentina, which was a big market for them, was to assemble BlackBerry phones in Argentina.

Um, and they were kind of given some, from some of those, like, prodding from the government.

They were pushed to make those phones in a place called Tierra del Fuego, which is, like, the Land of Fire, um, which is this kind of, like, island or archipelago so far south, it's actually where many boats would, like, leave if they were headed for Antarctica.

So it's a, a very remote place.

How, how do food and economics intersect in interesting ways? What kind of stories are you planning on telling?

He and Alex Mayyasi head out on tour, meeting different Planet Money hosts and special guests in new cities every couple months.

Hello, and welcome to the Planet Money live show.

What do we got? We've got nonfiction.

We've got number three on the print hardcover nonfiction list.

Okay.

And, you know, the story in the book, and this one comes from, like, a classic, amazing Planet Money episode, is about two farmers, I mean, they're a couple, ran their farm together, and, you know, there was a year in the early 2000s where the leadership of the cartel said, "Okay, this year we're diverting, everyone's diverting 47% of their crop." So not selling it, and it goes to the cartel, which in theory, you know, will, will save it, sell it later, and then pass money back.

But in practice, these, this couple, these farmers felt like this decision just kind of comes on high down to us.

We're not involved, and, like, they spend a lot of that money on, you know, sometimes marketing coups like that California raisins, but other things, administrative costs that they didn't necessarily see a huge benefit from in their opinion.

And so they decided they, they felt that they'd found almost a, a legal loophole where if they did s- certain aspects of, like, packing raisins themselves-

Mm.

Right? Like, companies are always in competition, and in a state of, like, perfect competition, basically their profits go down to zero 'cause they're all busy trying to lower their price, make a better product, which is great for all of us as consumers, but not great if you wanna make a profit.

And so, like, how do you get out of that? A cartel is one way that you may be able to boost your price by having, like, managing the supply and having pricing power.

Uh, he is Ricky Ricardo.

Right.

So Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball are famous for having created the beloved sitcom, I Love Lucy.

But another way what they did, and especially what Desi figured out, he really, like, created the business model of television.

He found it...

He figured out how to make television really lucrative because TV was once this thing, it was almost like radio, and then they, they put a camera on it.

Um, they were like these little plays in front of a single camera.

So I'm curious what you have to say about it.

Did that take you a while to wrap your brain around, or did you just know it from the start?

You know, I have been reporting on business and economics, like, for most of my career, so it is something that I've been steeped in a bit.

But I do think, you know, I really fell in love with the feeling early on, and still love experiencing it today, that feeling when you, you kind of learn some sort of economic concept, and it just kind of unlocks a lot.

So one example I can give there is this economic idea called Baumol's cost disease.

So Baumol was an economist who was asked by the JFK administration, "Hey, could you look into why so many, like, artists and theaters are struggling financially?" And so him and a collaborator, another economist, you know, they go interview people.

They look for data in, you know, filing cabinets in Broadway theaters.

And what they come up with is this really elegant theory that there are kind of two parts of the economy.

[laughs]

[chuckles]

... um, you know, to recruit young, well-educated women who could pick up this work, they, they were kind of trying to do a, a version of a nice college campus.

They said, you know, "We have quarterly magazines.

Um, there are literary aspects of the environment." Um, they were trying to make it an attractive place so that they could, you know, get talent, get these talented young women who could pick up these very intimidating machines.

And there are great kind of accounts that some of them wrote about what it was like to, to kind of face this tempestuous beast o- of these power looms for the very first time.

Um, but then, you know, they would pick it up, and their productivity would increase and increase.

Um, and one of those points, too, that I think, uh, James Bessen makes in his work, others have noted, is that, like, it, it's not like all the productivity was in the machine.

Yeah.

[chuckles]

... um, you know, to recruit young, well-educated women who could pick up this work they, they were kind of trying to do a, a version of a nice college campus.

They said, you know, "We have quarterly magazines, um, there are literary aspects of the environment." Um, they were trying to make it an attractive place so that they could, you know, get talent, get these talented young women who could pick up these very intimidating machines, and there are great kind of accounts that some of them wrote about what it was like to, to kind of face this tempestuous beast o- of these power looms for the very first time.

Um, but then, you know, they would pick it up, and their productivity would increase and increase.

Um, and one of those points, too, that I think, uh, James Bessen makes in his work, others have noted, is that, like, it- it's not like all the productivity was in the machine.

You know, the machine made people much more productive, but a worker's first day on the job, you know, they were not very productive.

But then, you know, they learned how to work with these machines, they got more skilled, and producti- productivity increased, and then over time people also learned how to increase, uh, like, improve those machines as well.

[chuckles]

[mailbox closing] I wonder where Alex's next adventure is.

Dear Darian, ahoy from the Strait of Gibraltar, pirate-free for two hundred years.

So for centuries, North African pirates captured trading ships as they sailed the narrow strait that connects the Atlantic Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea.

The crossing was perilous.

That was until the 1800s when the United States sent a naval squadron to intimidate the Barbary States of Tripoli and Algiers.

France then conquered Algeria in 1830.

Today, there's general agreement among countries from Morocco to India to Japan to protect the seas and not seize rivals' cargo.

Happy sailing, Darian.

Maybe a little bit on the nose.

And at one point I saw an article about how an Indian newspaper had celebrated the mango season by making the cover of that day's newspaper smell like mangoes.

And so I sent a link to that article to Tom, and I was like, "See? It's possible.

Like, we gotta make the cover of this book smell like money."

But at the beginning at least, the law seemed to be winning.

There was this point where I'd written two chapters of the book, and these were these, like, totally original chapters that took quite a while, and it was very obvious that, like, if every chapter takes this long, this book is not coming out anywhere close to on time.

So explain what she did, and how it, like, is very similar to what Donald Trump is trying to do, and whether it worked out.

Yeah, so if you go back to, you know, roughly the early 2000s, she's elected in Argentina, and her rhetoric is something that I think would sound very familiar to Americans today.

She thinks it was a mistake to let so much manufacturing leave Argentina, and for Argentina to be importing so many of these things.

She is concerned about the manufacturing jobs that were lost due to globalization, and she says, "Argentina should be building things again.

Argentina should be making things again." And she uses tariffs and other regulations to essentially force companies to manufacture in Argentina, and so often that meant making renowned, well-known international companies, whether that was a, a car company or a phone company, manufacture things in Argentina if they wanted to sell in Argentina.

And so specifically, you know, our chapter in the book focuses on smartphones.

This is, I wanna say, something like 2005, 2007.

But how much of that do you think is just knee-jerk, anti-anything foreign succeeding in American markets? And how much of it is Trump not really understanding what the US' comparative advantages are?

So explain what she did and how it's very similar to what Donald Trump is trying to do and whether it worked out.

Yeah.

So if you go back to roughly the early 2000s, she's elected in Argentina and her rhetoric is something that I think would sound very familiar to Americans today.

She thinks it was a mistake to let so much manufacturing leave Argentina and for Argentina to be importing so many of these things.

She is concerned about the manufacturing jobs that were lost due to globalization.

And she says, Argentina should be building things again.

Argentina should be making things again.

But they succeed.

But they succeed.

Yeah, it's kind of incredible.

You know, there's this great anecdote of an engineer.

They're saying that they're getting all this equipment showing up.

They like don't have places to put it.

And they're jokingly asking people like, can you put some in your house? Do you have anywhere to put this stuff? But they do, you know, create this factory that's so advanced.

It's like tracking dust mites in the air so that that doesn't, I don't really understand how, but like mess up the creation of these smartphones and they create smartphones.

But how much of that do you think is just knee jerk, anti anything foreign succeeding in American markets? And how much of it is Trump not really understanding what the U.S.'s comparative advantages are? Yeah.