(The) Ghost in the Machine: The Unsung Saga of the Shipping Container

A testimony to the power of a simple, elegant system. We bear witness to the single most important object in globalisation (a corrugated metal box, "the Shipping Container") and its vast, unintended consequences.Before 1956, global trade was a chaotic, expensive mess. This is the story of Malcom McLean, a trucker with a simple idea that changed everything: put the cargo in a standardised box. This episode would trace how this simple invention collapsed the cost of shipping, redrew the world's economic map, led to the boom of Asian manufacturing, and made the dizzying variety of consumer goods in your local supermarket possible. It also killed traditional port cities and created "chokepoints" of global capitalism.