#140 Citizen Coke: The History of Coca-Cola w/ Bartow Elmore

The Road to Now

Benjamin Sawyer

Society & Culture, History

4.8 • 629 Ratings

🗓️ 26 August 2019

⏱️ 66 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Coca-Cola is one of the most well-known products on planet earth, but did you ever wonder how a brown fizzy drink fueled the rise of a corporate juggernaut? The answer, says Ohio State historian Bartow Elmore, has everything to do with its business structure. In this episode, Bart offers his take on how Coke went from Atlanta soda parlors in the late 19th century to markets across the globe in less than a century, all along reaping tremendous benefits from public infrastructure while passing the bulk of its environmental costs on to others. Bart also talks about the difficulties of doing research on powerful corporations, why he thinks we should care about environmental history, and the meaning of what he calls "Coca-Cola Capitalism."

Dr. Bartow Elmore is Associate Professor of History at The Ohio State University. His book, Citizen Coke: The Making of Coca-Cola Capitalism (W.W. Norton, 2015) won the Axiom Business Book Award for best business commentary in 2015 and the Council of Graduate Schools 2016 Gustave O. Arlt Award in the Humanities. He is currently researching the history of Monsanto. You can follow him on twitter at @BartElmore.

You can get Citizen Coke on audiobook at libro.fm. Click here & enter promo code RTN at checkout to get this book & 3 more for just $15!

The Road to Now is part of the Osiris Podcast Network. This episode was edited by Gary Fletcher.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Southern Songs and Stories is a documentary series on the artists, music, and culture of the South, with interviews, songs, a good bit of history, and insights
0:22.4	into how all of it fits together. I'm your host Joe Kendrick, inviting you to come explore
0:27.9	the music of the South and the artists who make it on Southern Songs and Stories. I'm Bob Crawford, and this is the Road to Now.
0:47.8	I'm out here in Santa Barbara, California.
0:50.4	This is the last night of almost three-week run for the AVet Brothers.
0:55.9	We've had great shows out here with Lake Street Dive.
0:59.8	I want to thank everyone who's come to these West Coast concerts,
1:04.1	and I want to thank everyone who's been downloading Road to Now and RTN Theology,
1:09.9	and telling their friends about it, tweeting about it,
1:13.2	Instagramming about it, and giving us those great ratings on Apple Podcasts.
1:18.0	We really appreciate your support.
1:20.8	Well, this week, Ben and I spoke with Bart Elmore.
1:24.9	He is an environmental historian and an associate professor of history at
1:30.3	the Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio. He's also the author of the 2015 book, Citizen
1:38.2	Coke, The Making of Coca-Cola Capitalism. Now, I read this book for a class that actually just started this week.
1:48.8	It's business history. And our professor assigned two books. We could choose from one of two books
1:56.4	that we have to write a review on. The reviews actually do this week. I chose Citizen Coke,
2:02.5	and I listened to it on Libro, wrote to now sponsor Libro, downloaded it on Libro.fm.
2:09.7	A great place to listen to audiobooks. And when you sign up for Libro, you can pick an
2:15.1	independent bookstore where when you download a book from Libro,
2:18.9	they get a percentage of the profits. But anyway, I downloaded Citizen Coke and I half
2:25.8	listened to it and half read it while my family had our beach vacation a couple weeks ago.
	...

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