Hi, everyone. Welcome to the A6 and Z podcast. I'm Sonal. Today's episode with me and Hannah is another one of our

podcast from our recent road trip with voices from the ground in Washington, D.C., though this one actually

takes us all around the world. Our guest is economist, historian, and journalist, who was last at

The Economist, Mark Levinson, the author of the beloved book, The Box, which is about how the shipping

container made

the world smaller and economy bigger. But this hallway-stall conversation is actually a quick tour

through all his books, starting from his most recent one in extraordinary time, where we

touch briefly on the topic of the golden age of productivity and beyond, to the topic of the

death of retail and his book, The Great A&P, to finally wrapping up on

logistics, transportation infrastructure, supply chains, and touching very briefly on a future

of work.

And where government comes in policy-wise and all this, or doesn't.

We're so excited to have you.

Welcome, Mark.

Thank you.

Glad to be with you.

So those seem like really different topics.

What's a big idea that drives the thrust of your work that kind of connects all the dots?

I'm really interested in the connections between economics and the world we live in.

A lot of my work starts out at a microeconomic level, looking at particular companies, looking

at particular industries, and tying the developments there to broader trends that really affect

how we live, affect our standards of living. More recently, I've been focusing on some of the

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