#1564 How Marketing Has Shaped Our World for the Worse
Best of the Left - Leftist Perspectives on Progressive Politics, News, Culture, Economics and Democracy
Jay Tomlinson
4.5 • 3.4K Ratings
🗓️ 7 June 2023
⏱️ 64 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Air Date 6/6/2023
Today, we take a look at the widespread impact of marketing on culture, consumerism, transportation, food, gender roles, and gun ownership in the United States.
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SHOW NOTES
Ch. 1: Our Consumer Society - Then & Now - Air Date 6-9-22
I explore our consumer society, looking at the history, philosophy, psychology, and sociology of what consumerism really means. Is it a useful concept? Where did it appear from? Are there alternatives?
Ch. 2: Would You Fall for It? - Not Just Bikes - Air Date 1-9-23
In the 1950s, the US automobile industry was lobbying hard to get more funding for roads and highways. Part of this effort included propaganda targeted to the general public.
Ch. 3: How The Auto Industry Carjacked The American Dream - Climate Town - Air Date 4-8-21
Based on an article by Spencer R. Scott P.h.D.
Ch. 4: How Backyard Grilling Conquered America - Cheddar Explains - Air Date 5-19-20
Backyard grilling is an American institution. But have you ever wondered where it came from? You might be surprised to learn that the history of your weekend barbecue twists and turns back through the earliest years of America’s past.
Ch. 5: WOKE BRANDS - hbomberguy - Air Date 2-22-19
Can a product be truly progressive? How can I free my skin? Let's discuss!
Ch. 6: Men Eat Red Meat, Women Eat Salads –– But Why? - Cool Stuff Ride Home - Air Date 10-26-22
How and why did food become so gendered? Y’know, men eat red meat and women eat salads. When did those associations begin?
Just like tobacco companies targeted kids to create a market of “replacement smokers,” so do gun manufacturers. Boys as young as 6 are targeted with ads conflating guns with masculinity so that by the time they turn 18, the seed has been planted.
MEMBERS-ONLY BONUS CLIP(S)
Ch. 8: These Stupid Trucks are Literally Killing Us - Not Just Bikes - Air Date 3-6-23
Engineers, planners, politicians, and advocates all around the world are trying to improve their cities and build more great walkable places with viable alternatives to driving. But there's a looming trend that could undo all of that hard work
"Beef. It’s what’s for dinner," the baritone voices of actors Robert Mitchum and Sam Elliott told us in the 1990s. "We’re not gonna let Joe Biden and Kamala Harris cut America’s meat!" cried Mike Pence during a speech in Iowa last year.
FINAL COMMENTS
Ch. 12: Final comments on the counterweight to the power of marketing
MUSIC (Blue Dot Sessions)
SHOW IMAGE:
Description: A 1930s print car ad shows an illustration of a large silver Pontiac car with nicely dressed couples admiring the outside. The tagline reads “If you want to ride in luxury and save your money, too… Pontiac’s the Answer”. Some ad copy is visible below the image in small unreadable text.
Credit: “Pontiac Car 1938 Ad” by Indiana Ivy Nature Photographer, Flickr | License: CC BY 2.0 | Changes: Cropped, some left-side color extended
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to this episode of the award-winning Best of a Left podcast in which we shall |
| 0:07.0 | take a look at the widespread impact of marketing on culture, consumerism, transportation, food, |
| 0:13.6 | gender roles, and gun ownership in the United States. |
| 0:17.0 | It's sort of a nice summary topic, I think. |
| 0:20.4 | Clips today include then and now, not just bikes, climate town, cheddar, H. Bomberguy, |
| 0:28.9 | cool stuff ride home and marketing muck-raking with additional members on the clips from |
| 0:35.1 | not just bikes and citations needed. |
| 0:44.2 | Some objects, some consumer goods, fulfill a simple, natural, biological need. |
| 0:52.2 | We eat to satiate ourselves. |
| 0:55.0 | We buy a bed to sleep on, a home to protect us from the elements, but we're not just a |
| 1:01.8 | needs species. |
| 1:03.9 | We go beyond our simple needs. |
| 1:07.0 | We create new desires, new ways of being in the world. |
| 1:11.9 | We seem to have a desire for the new, but really understanding what that means, what it |
| 1:19.8 | could mean has only developed over the past few hundred years. |
| 1:26.2 | We can see this shift in what desire means across the 19th century. |
| 1:32.0 | Sociologist Colin Campbell argues, for example, that romanticism, that hugely influential pan-European |
| 1:39.6 | movement that emphasized feelings, sentiments, emotions, novel experiences, and adventure |
| 1:47.5 | and creativity, was an important part of the development of a consumerist outlook. |
| 1:54.7 | Campbell writes that the consumer withdraws from reality as fast as he encounters it, ever |
| 2:01.2 | casting his daydreams forward in time, attaching them to objects of desire and then subsequently |
| 2:09.0 | unhooking them. |
... |
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