There's this whole industry that's arisen that just manufactures flavor. So it's not an accident

that we like this food and we crave it. Elon Musk, richest man in the world, doesn't seem so happy.

President of the United States, Donald Trump, seems really angry all the time. I hope that the last

few decades will be looked back on as an anomaly and as maybe a last burst of a kind of ruthless capitalism that wasn't inevitable and that we can absolutely move beyond if we make the effort to do so.

Hello and welcome to Ways to Change the World.

I'm Christian Gary Murphy, and this is the podcast where we talk to extraordinary people

about the big ideas in their lives and the events that have helped shape them.

My guest this week is Eric Schlosser, the investigative journalist and author whose work

has fundamentally

changed how we think about what we eat. Fast Food Nation was a landmark book that exposed the abuse

of animals and the exploitation of workers at the heart of America's food industry. Now, 25 years

after it was first published, Schlosser says he is astonished that not only has the industry

failed to improve, in many ways it has gotten worse. And yet, despite this, he still believes change

is possible. Eric Schlosser, welcome. Thanks for having me. How would you change the world?

Less greed, more compassion.

Greed is at the center of everything here, not just in terms of what we want to eat, but how it's produced.

You know, there was a film Wall Street that came out, I think, in the 90s in the States,

and there was a character in it who argued

that greed is good. And that was sort of the heart of American culture then, and in so many ways,

unchecked, untrammeled, celebrated greed, I think is responsible for so many of the social problems we have

right now.

The book originally came about, I suppose, because of the exploitation of workers that you

...