This is Planet Money from NPR.

I don't know about you, but every time I pick up a book in a bookstore at a yard sale,

the things I'm mostly paying attention to are the words.

You know, the title, the author's name, the actual reading material,

way more than the physical package they come in. But had an experience recently

that changed all that. You see, last year my boss's boss here in the show, my grand boss,

he asked if anyone wanted to report out the story behind the making of the Planet Money book,

to see what it might reveal about the global economic machinery behind every book.

I accepted that mission, which is how earlier this year I found myself

spulunking deep inside the publishing industrial complex.

I got an invitation to see one of the biggest bookmaking factories in the world,

part of the lakeside book company.

And stepping into this place felt like stepping into Willy Wonka's factory, but for books.

And while I didn't find any bookish umpalumpas, I did meet a guy named Chris Mudey, ironically, extremely chipper.

Chris basically grew up at the plant.

I started off in college and be a high school art teacher and then took a gap year.

And that gap year has now been almost 39 years with the company.

I'd come to Chris to help answer this sort of deceptively simple question.

Where do books come from? Like in a material, physical way, what path do they take

before they end up on a shelf near you? And his response was to take me on a little tour.

Really what we're going to do at this point is just walk down. We head off down a meandering,

mile-long path through a series of cavernous warehouses. For my own safety, Chris insists we stay

...