What's up, guys? If you're on Spotify right now, please follow the show so that you don't miss any future episodes and leave a five-star review. Thank you.

In the 1500s, the fourth largest manufacturing power was India.

India was producing amazing stuff. They were in a great position because they were there, you know, between China, Iraq, Iran, all that. Then the British come in. And the thing that the British destroyed was all manufacturing in India. Because once the British sucked everything out of India, then they wanted to turn Indians into consumers of British and imported goods. So they destroyed India's ability to

manufacture and flooded India with cheap. All right. All right, Rachel, thank you so much for

coming here. And congratulations on the new book coming

out making it in america by rachel sleigh we're going to talk all about it today so the

link will be in the description for everyone to check it out but we were just talking a little bit

before the podcast i love talking with people like you who have a whole bunch of scope of history beyond just the topic they're covering like right now.

We're going to talk about the fact that you're really covering where manufacturing in America is at the moment,

but you've gone through all the way back to basically like almost the 1600s with the history of how we got here and what went on. So what got you into this

story in the first place, though? What made you interested in covering, I guess, the fall of

U.S. manufacturing? Yeah, well, the fall and revival, because this is an upbeat story. I mean,

I want people to understand, like, we're going to do this. It's going to happen with it

without you. You might as well get on board. But great question. The answer is I was the biggest nerd when I was a kid. That's

probably not surprising. I write books. And I was obsessed with labels. I really was. I read

everything. I mean, when you're a reader, like there's nothing you won't read. You know, I was reading the back of my Barbies, and it would say, like, patent

pending. I'm looking at this thing when I'm, I don't know what, six years old, and I'm like, what's patent pending? Are you OCD? Because I'm OCD. That's something I would do. Okay, I wouldn't say it's, I wouldn't say it was, okay, I'm a compulsive reader.

Yes, I am. I love ad copy. I love cereal boxes. Anyways, the point is, like, I was always

reading labels. And when I was a kid, which was 100 million years ago, but we'll just say

70s in the 70s, almost everything was made in the U.S., and I know that because I was reading these labels, right? And so the one thing that you were supposed to look for wasn't just made in U.S. because, of course, everything was made in the U.S., but also you're supposed to look for the union label. There was even a song. Look for the union label was that was a thing oh yeah oh my god yes yes

yes it was you guys need to find this clip all right look it up it was it was like a jingle it was a

total jingle was sung by the like look at the team stirs yeah it was some by the i l gw the international

...