This blog is part of my 38 before 38 series. I write a blog for every single day for the 38 days leading up to my 38th Birthday.
I am very busy today, so here are some podcast episode recommendations.
Sealing Debt
US treasury bonds are safest investment in the world. To the point where countries like India and China buy 10 year US T-Notes for foreign reserves. Because the US government never defaulted on its debt right?
In this episode from Planet Money, they revealed that it has. In 1979, the US congress waited till the end to raise the debt ceiling. And there were some technical issues with printing of checks. So the checks went out later than the due dates. Which is technically a default.
What’s Up Doc?
From Philosophize This, this is a 7 part series on The Frankfurt School.
The Frankfurt School were a group of Marxist philosophers that came up in Germany post-WWI. The Frankfurt School confirmed Marx’s ideas of industrialized labor and alienation, but also rejected some of his teleological propositions. They considered Marx to be limited to just economy.
The central thesis of the Frankfurt School can be summarized thus:
- Industrial Society is totalitarian in its make-up.
- The totalitarianism comes not in the form of the proverbial stick, but the carrot.
- People are kept in a constant state of desire to consume, which forces them to work for that consumption. This is done through mass media, or what they called the Culture Industry.
- They are kept compelled to preserve this status quo thorough the progress-indicator of rapid technological advancement.
Of course, none of the thinkers claimed that this is due to some grand conspiracy. These are a feature of a Capitalist economy.
Letting go
99% Invisible brings us this is the story of the Stalin era effort to industrialize Soviet food production. Most of the industrialized processed foods were copies of American counterparts. But then the Socialist Republic had another problem. They needed to create a cuisine out of hamburger and cereals. Foods foreign to the various states in the federation. It ended up with a Cook Book featuring recipes using these American products and recipes from the whole of Soviet federation.
This episode discusses the man behind the cookbook. And how it transformed, or maybe failed to transform, Soviet society.