Aug 5, 2026 · 1 hr 7 min · 12 segments
Virginia Postrel has made a career out of seeing the extraordinary in the everyday -- from the growing importance of "look and feel" in the products we buy, to the power of glamour to arouse our sense…
Virginia PostrelGuest
Brink LindseyHost
So in a previous life, I was a lawyer and one of the joys of, of, of my job, I was an anti-dumping lawyer.
So we represented clients that were accused of who are exporting to the United States and accused of selling at an unfairly low price.
So to, defend those cases, you had to know a lot about the production process as well as about the sales process and all their accounting details and so forth.
So I got to do tours of, you know, everything from the lowest tech, you know, just injection plastic molding, cigarette lighter factories to high tech, you know, making the flat panel displays for laptops, all up and down the, you know, the scale of complexity.
And one of my recent works in progress columns is about disposable diapers.
And there I really, really wanted a factory tour, but they're incredibly secretive and I couldn't get one.
So now that I'm on this current jag with the permanent problem, I find myself in this very peculiar and lonely position of simultaneously thinking that we really ought to be much, much more conscious of the incredible bounty that consumerism has given us and, and to understand the cleverness and, and ingenuity that had to compound over time to give us all these things.
And simultaneously much more conscious of the limits of what consumerism can do for our lives.
That, that there's a whole lot of other, there's a whole, you know, the most important things in life are, are, are not the things you can buy at the store.
And so I find myself flopping back and forth between those two positions and angering everybody in the process.
Well, one thing I was thinking about, you know, your perspective in the context of the Everyday Abundance podcast.
And I was saying, you know, really, our stories are, for the most part, about...
And I think people who are really into their work tend to overemphasize the importance of work as a source of meaning in life.
So in a previous life, I was a lawyer and one of the joys of, of, of my job, I was an anti-dumping lawyer.
So we represented clients that were accused of who are exporting to the United States and accused of selling at an unfairly low price.
So to, defend those cases, you had to know a lot about the production process as well as about the sales process and all their accounting details and so forth.
So I got to do tours of, you know, everything from the lowest tech, you know, just injection plastic molding, cigarette lighter factories to high tech, you know, making the flat panel displays for laptops, all up and down the, you know, the scale of complexity.
And one of my recent works in progress columns is about disposable diapers.
And there I really, really wanted a factory tour, but they're incredibly secretive and I couldn't get one.
So now that I'm on this current jag with the permanent problem, I find myself in this very peculiar and lonely position of simultaneously thinking that we really ought to be much, much more conscious of the incredible bounty that consumerism has given us and, and to understand the cleverness and, and ingenuity that had to compound over time to give us all these things.
And simultaneously much more conscious of the limits of what consumerism can do for our lives.
That, that there's a whole lot of other, there's a whole, you know, the most important things in life are, are, are not the things you can buy at the store.
And so I find myself flopping back and forth between those two positions and angering everybody in the process.
Well, one thing I was thinking about, you know, your perspective in the context of the Everyday Abundance podcast.
And I was saying, you know, really, our stories are, for the most part, about...
And I think people who are really into their work tend to overemphasize the importance of work as a source of meaning in life.
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