Hi everyone, welcome to the A6 and Z podcast. I'm Sonal. In this episode, we're resurfacing one of our

favorite episodes on one of the most seemingly boring, but not to us, topics, container ships,

the logistics of supply chains, and more. In this episode, first recorded over two and a half

years ago in Washington, D.C., we interviewed the box author Mark Levinson.

Here's the original intro with more details about what follows.

Hi, everyone. Welcome to the A6 and Z podcast. I'm Sonal.

Today's episode with me and Hannah is another one of our podcasts 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-style 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 the 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,

...