Factually! with Adam Conover - The High Cost of Cheap Clothes with Dana Thomas

Episode Date: March 31, 2021

Clothes today cost a fraction of what they cost our grandparents — but why, and at what cost? Journalist and author Dana Thomas joins Adam to break down how fast fashion has made the industry explode into a one-trillion dollar industry, how dismal the working conditions are in many overseas factories, and how to shop and dress more sustainably. To check out Dana’s newest book Fashionopolis, visit http://factuallypod.com/books. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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So if all of that sounds good, if you want a big box of delicious snacks like this for yourself, use the code factually for $15 off your first order at Bokksu.com. That's code factually for $15 off your first order on Bokksu.com. I don't know the way. I don't know what to think. I don't know what to say. Yeah, but that's alright. Yeah, that's okay. I don't know anything. Hello, everyone. Welcome to Factually. I'm Adam Conover. And we had Angela Chen who wrote Ace, an incredible guide to what asexuality reveals about desire, our society, and the meaning of sex. And it occurred to me, hey, maybe after you've heard these interviews, you would like a place to go where you could easily purchase their book

and support the show. Well, we have created that place for you. If you head to this short, easy-to-remember URL, factuallypod.com slash books, you will be presented with a bookstore on which you will see the book of every guest we have ever had on the show. And because we are running that little bookstore through bookshop.org, your purchase will not only support the show, it will also support a local bookstore in your neighborhood. So check it out. That URL once again is factuallypod.com

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Seems a little more Halloween related, but you know what? Again, I will take it. You can check out their curated comedy homepage to find your next comedy podcast obsession. And don't forget that if you sign up for Stitcher Premium, you can listen to Factually, that's this show, ad free, as well as our bonus series, Questions and Adam. That's right. I'm still very proud of that name. Questions and Adam, which is an exclusive to Stitcher Premium. That's the show where I interview some of my favorite comedians and ask them your questions. And plus, you can listen to many other comedy pods ad free like Comedy Bang Bang.

How did this get made? And more for only $4.99 a month or $34.99 a year. Use code FACT when you sign up for Stitcher Premium and you can get your first month free. Code is only valid on Stitcher.com slash premium and not valid on in-app purchases. Okay, housekeeping complete. Let's get to this show. Today, we are talking about fashion. And I know, I know a lot of you are probably thinking, fashion, Adam, that is so frivolous and silly and unimportant. If I wanted stuff like that, I'd watch a reality show or read a magazine

in the dentist's office. But no, look, I am here to tell you that fashion is important. In fact, you cannot understand the last 250 years of world history or our modern economy without it. The truth is the essential commodity in the creation of the world economy in the 18th and 19th centuries was cotton. You know, the thing we use to make clothes. In fact, it's not a stretch to say that without cotton and cotton clothes, we wouldn't have America as we know it today at all. Demand for cotton drove America's violent slavery-fueled territorial expansion. slavery-fueled territorial expansion. And it created an industrial base in the Northeast and was America's leading export from 1803 all the way to 1937. That's a pretty important 134 years of American history. And in that 134 years, America grew to be a bona fide

world economic power, in large part because of all that damn cotton. But it wasn't just the cotton itself that fueled the industrialization of America and the world. It's fashion itself. In the 19th century, the idea of fashion took hold in industrializing countries, specifically the idea that fashion is seasonal, that people should want and desire new goods season after season, new looks, new styles,

and that women of all classes should do so. While cotton created a supply for industrial global capitalism, it was fashion that created the demand. Without all these people demanding new fall fashions, as soon as there's a nip in the air, oh my God, it's gotten a little cool. I think I need a new warm jacket for the season. Well, we wouldn't have the economy that we do today. Now, the fashion industry, needless to say, has also always relied on exploitation from the cotton field to the sweatshop. And that's why fashion also has a pivotal role in the history of the labor movement. In 1911, the Triangle Shirtwaist factory in New York City caught fire. The factory employed hundreds of women working in sweatshop conditions. But the doors of the factory were locked because the rapacious employers accused

the women of stealing. So they locked the doors so they weren't able to get out, and the fire escapes were faulty. As a result, 146 workers perished in the fire. A social reformer named Francis Perkins led a committee to investigate, which led to the creation of a number of labor laws to protect workers. Perkins would go on to become FDR's Secretary of Labor during the Great Depression and help enact a minimum wage, end child labor, and give workers the right to organize and form a union. In that way, the fashion industry, far from trivial, is at the root of the worker protections that we have today. And fashion is no less central for understanding our global economy today than it was a century ago. On what we might call the

positive side of the fashion industry, fashion today is a two trillion dollar business that employs tens of millions of people around the globe. And the industry pumps out an incredible number of clothes at incredibly low prices. Clothes in 2016 were more than 50 percent cheaper than they were in 1980, just a few decades earlier. Half the price. That means that Americans can buy vastly more clothes for less money than ever before. And that is, to some extent, a good thing. But as ever, there is a negative side to the fashion industry as well. Many fashion industry workers who are more likely today to live in Bangladesh or Vietnam than the Lower East Side, faced the very same abuses that existed in the industry of the 1890s,

or frankly, abuses that are even worse. And beyond that, the fashion industry we have today has a devastating impact on the environment. You know, how much clean water do we really need to waste to give our jeans that perfect worn-in fade? How many cute tops does it take to justify the two billion metric tons of yearly greenhouse gas emissions? Sure, it's great to be able to buy a new T-shirt for

a nickel. But when the costs are so high, is that discount really worth it? Well, to help us answer these questions today, we have what I have to say is the perfect guest. Her name is Dana Thomas. She is a veteran fashion reporter for publications all over the world. And let's be clear, as a fashion reporter, she doesn't just write about trends. She does investigative work into the industry and its practices. She's the author of a new book called Fashionopolis, The Price of Fast Fashion and the Future of Clothes. Please welcome Dana Thomas. Dana Thomas, thank you so much for being here. My pleasure. So you are a lifelong or at least career long fashion reporter. You've spent your life in that world. What led you to write a book about how fast fashion is destroying the planet? That seems like a little bit in the other direction. Well, it is and it isn't. I've always been

sort of an investigative reporter on the fashion industry, and I'm one of the few that is. I kind of invented the beat in a way. And that's because I started my career at the Washington Post. That whole idea of investigation sort of permeated over the whole newsroom. So even on the fashion desk, we were like, you know what? We got to dig. We can't just write about, you know, hemlines and shoes and beauty. So I worked for this wonderful editor named Nina Hyde who'd been there since the early 70s and late 60s and was hired by Ben Bradley.

And I worked under Ben Bradley in the beginning of my career. And she taught me that, you know, fashion is just like politics and business. You know, you got to cover it as a beat because it is in the end politics and business. And it's not about hemlines and shoe heel heights. It's about, you know, a major global industry that touches everyone from the workers in Bangladesh to Park Avenue socialites. And then everybody who's reading the paper, because what do we do every morning? We get up, we brush our teeth, we get dressed. So, you know, how, what is the story behind those clothes that we're putting on? So I've actually written three books about it. The

first one was Deluxe, How Luxury Lost Its Luster, that really was a deep dive into the luxury fashion industry and took apart and really did the history as well of Louis Vuitton, Hermes, Prada, Gucci, Chanel. And then I wrote Gods and Kings, the rise and fall of Alexander McQueen and John Galliano, which was a double biography because these two sort of ran parallel and were competing with each other and then burned out at the same time. And now Fashionopolis. And I see it kind of as a trilogy where Deluxe was about how the luxury industry sacrificed its integrity for the sake of profit. Gods and Kings was about how the fashion industry sacrificed the creative for the sake of profit, you know,

that, you know, we could drive them to the point of suicide and alcoholism. And, and this one is about how it just sacrificed the planet and humanity for the sake of profit, that it's just, you know, capitalism at its absolute worst. And now it's reverberating to the, to, you know, humanity and the planet that it just, it's all about, you know, it's driven by greed. When I first started working on these books, I sat down and I wrote down the seven deadly sins and I thought, okay, which ones are applying here? And it was just, it turned out it was just all about greed, greed, greed, greed. And greed is the machine that drives the fashion industry. We talk about beauty and sexy and, you know, and allure and glamour, but in the end, it's just

greed, plain and simple. And I decided because I've had the advantage of working first for the Washington Post and secondly for the New York Times and thirdly for Newsweek, I was the European cultural and fashion correspondent for Newsweek for 15 years in Paris, where none of these outlets were beholden to these brands for advertising. I had free reign to actually dig and do the work I needed to do. And so that's why I was able to sort of carve out this idea of being the Woodward and Bernstein of fashion. was able to sort of carve out this idea of being the woodworking Bernstein of fashion. And, and now there's a whole crop of young reporters who are following my footsteps and they're actually kind of dusted me because they're young, single, and they don't have

kids. Well, I, I think you're right that this is a, of course you're right, that this is a topic that deserves to be taken seriously. And it's an industry that deserves to be taken seriously. A $1 trillion industry. One trillion. I mean, it's enormous. Yeah.

One out of six people on the planet somehow work in the fashion industry, whether it's growing cotton or modeling on the runway. I mean, that's basically you swing a cat, you're going to hit somebody. One out of how many? One out of six. One out of six. One out of six people work in the clothing. Somehow to the fashion industry. Wow. That's. It might be the woman who's spritzing perfume on you as you walk through the department store, if we ever do that

again. Or it could be, you know, the cotton farmer in Texas or in India. But, you know, within reach, somebody, you encounter somebody who works in the fashion industry all the time, every day. Wow. One trillion, and you say three trillion by 2030. Three trillion by 2030.

That, I mean... And one trillion is a conservative figure because it's a bit fuzzy. It's fuzzy arithmetic, as George Bush used to say. And it must be difficult to measure something that's so large. And that is in so many different segments. And so, I mean, you're talking about both, you know, Galeano high fashion and, you know, someone selling, you know, making and selling something very locally. Absolutely.

You know, a country. Your dressmaker. Or India, someplace like that. And you're Taylor. Yeah, absolutely. And that's actually one of the things that comes under fire regularly is that the numbers are a bit fuzzy math because most of them are not peer-reviewed.

So, like, there's some figures that the World Bank puts out, and then when you dig deep, they're like, where did the World Bank get these numbers? And if you can't trust the World Bank, who can you trust? Or McKinsey. And they're like, where'd you get those figures? So there's actually some digging and peer review work to be done on these figures. And they haven't been done because nobody takes the fashion industry seriously.

They think it's, you know, frivolous. But it's not frivolous. It's an actual, seriously mega, mega business. And it's, you know, think about the ships, the cargo coming across the Atlantic, the trees that are being felled to make rayon and because they're all made of tree pulp and, and, you know, like Indonesian rainforest and the Brazilian rainforest and the cotton farmers from South Southwest America to India and China and the people who grow indigo. And it's an enormous, enormous, enormous business. And then we have Naomi Campbell. Right.

Right. Who's all the way at the other end of the other end. I mean, how uh the rise of fast fashion change this um because i mean i how much waste is involved and how much has that grown recently well the waste is extraordinary i mean we sell roughly because that figure is hard to nail down, but roughly 100 billion garments a year. No, they produce 100 billion garments a year, roughly. Wow.

They only sell 80 billion. Wow. 20 billion are destroyed every year before they ever hit the shop floor. That's enough for every person to wear a one of those garments i mean there's only what seven eight billion people on the planet yeah right that's enormous what what happens to these things i mean are they burned are they they're burned they're shredded their waters poured on them and then they rot and you know a company like Burberry

got busted for announcing that they did this in their, into destroying, how much they destroy in their annual report, because they're a publicly traded company. So they were obliged to disclose this in their annual report. And they got, you know, taken to the woodshed for it. But, you know, as I wrote my first book, Deluxe, this has been going on for years. You know, Chanel didn't sell all of whatever it did. It would just shred it and burn it and throw it in a dump. And what's the reason for this enormous waste? I mean, obviously, waste is bad for the planet because we're producing things we don't need. Exclusivity, you know, we just and again, like I described in my book, Deluxe, I went out to the outlets out near Palm Springs, California.

And, you know, I found a cardboard box at the Dior outlet that was filled with all these leftover John Galliano corsets and bras, and they were selling them for $5 a piece. And you were like, well, that's not terribly luxury. terribly luxury. And that's what kills the exclusivity. If you can go out to these outlets outside of Palm Springs and pick up stuff for five, 10, 15, 100 bucks, it normally sells for a hundred times more that. It kills the allure of the product. So rather than putting it in a cardboard box that you could just rifle through and say, oh, look at this pretty corset for 20 bucks, they'd rather destroy it and eat the loss. I also feel though, has something changed in the way that we, the consumer buy fashion? Like the clothes seem more disposable to me as well. I remember my experience of going to like an H&M, as well. I remember my experience of going to like an H and M like, uh, this was a number of years ago too, uh, in New York and just having it seem like the clothes were like lying on the floor.

Like they're all like, a lot of them are ripped and torn. Like they're already a little bit like disposable in this way. Um, which felt like a new thing to me to have clothes sold in that manner. Is there, we, we buy five times more clothes than we did per person than we did a generation ago. The average American. Yeah. And just think about it for a minute. I mean, well, if you, sorry, that was French. So if you live in, if you live in a, in a modern house, it's normal to have a walk-in closet, right? Like everyone has a walk-in closet, but if Like everyone has a walk-in closet. But if you live in an apartment that was pre-war, how big is your closet?

Very small. It's very small. It's very small. And yes, people have wardrobes, those piece of furnitures, but even they weren't terribly big. You know, for a woman 100 years ago to buy a new dress every season, she was a wealthy woman. Yeah. You didn't buy a new dress for Friday night She was a wealthy woman. Yeah. You didn't buy a new dress for Friday night's dinner date, but now we do. And now we, we also over, we, we buy,

I mean, to give you an idea today, the average American has seven pairs of blue jeans in their closet. One for every day of the week. I've got three or four, so that's pretty close. Yeah, I think I have four, which is more than I need. I don't wear all of them. And before, when blue jeans were first invented 150 years ago

by Levi Strauss, they were made to be sustainable. They were the original sustainable garment. Those rivets were to hold the seams together. And they were made for miners who were crawling around in the earth, digging for silver and gold, right? During the California

gold rush. And they would take those jeans and they would pass them on to the next miner. Like you struck gold. You're like, I'm done. I'm out of here. And then they would pass those jeans on. But now we want like, you know, we need our straight legs. We need our boot cut. We need our stovepipe. We need our low cut. We need our mom jeans. We need, you know, we need our straight legs. We need our boot cut. We need our stovepipe. We need our low cut. We need our mom jeans. We need, you know, we need black jeans, blue jeans, white jeans. And instead of being made to last, they come with holes in them already. And they come with holes in them already.

Worked and softened. And frayed. And they fall apart in six months. And then we need to buy a new pair. And that's the whole thing. months and then we need to buy a new pair. And that's the whole thing that the fashion industry realized in the last 25 years since I've been writing about it, that if they adopted like so many other industries, built-in obsolescence, then we're obliged to buy more. And then their numbers go up. You know, when I started covering the industry, it was one-sixth of the turnover that it is today.

You know, these companies like Louis Vuitton was a big company at $1 billion. Now it does $10 or $12 billion a year in sales. Most companies were sort of like $100 to $200 million a year in sales, $300 max, $400 max. And now they're all $3, $ four or $5 billion. I'm talking about like Dior and Gucci. They were little companies. When I first started, you know, in the 1970s, Louis Vuitton had two boutiques, two, and they'd had those two boutiques for a hundred years. And they did, they did like 14, 15, $20 million a year in sales. It was a tiny little company in 1977. Now they have hundreds and hundreds, I think 450 or 500 stores around the world.

And like I said, they do $10 to $12 billion a year in sales. And that's because they built in this idea, like when your washing machine breaks, or your cell phone doesn't sync up anymore to the new tech, that you've got to go out and get the new one. They build in the

obsolescence, so that it may go out of fashion or it may wear out. You need to replace it and you need to replace it often. Yeah. I mean, it makes sense if you're selling a product and you can make it cheaper and sell it to people twice as often, three times as often, you're going to make a lot more money without increasing your number of buyers, you vastly increase the number of products that you're selling. And the shift with this was fast fashion. And what happened was fast fashion is a new phenomenon. It's only about 25 years old. old. And, you know, a bit like fast food came into being in the 1950s with the automobile and then grew into this, you know, corrupted, dark, dark, dark world. And if you ever want

to read a really good book on that, that's Read Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser. So fast fashion is the same thing. And it grew out of this American industry idea of trying to compete with overseas producers by doing things quicker and what they call quick response. And quick response was that you produced a small amount and you put it in the stores and you saw how well it sold and what sold well. Say the navy blue T-shirt sold really well, then boom, we'll just produce some more navy blue T-shirts. But if the red T-shirts weren't selling very well, then we'll just stop making the red T-shirts. We won't have the waste. And then this brand in Spain called Zara, a little-known brand, little Spanish brand, took this QR idea and ran with it. And they started doing this where they're studying what's selling, but they're doing fashion as opposed to just like basics.

what's selling, but they're doing fashion as opposed to just like basics. And their numbers went up so quickly when they started replacing, you know, moving the items really quickly, the quick response, and then also doing what we call drops more often. So instead of changing the clothes only a couple of times a year, you know, the fall season, the winter season, the spring season, the summer season, they were changing them every two or three weeks. There would be new stuff on the floor. And so their numbers went up from customers showing up in Spain at their original stores from four to five times a year to 17 times a year because the people came in and said, what do you got new? What's new?

I want to see what's new. And then you got hooked. And every time you came in, you went out with something. So their numbers also went up exponentially. And so everybody else tapped into this. And first it was H&M and it was Gap and it was Benetton and these other sort of mid-range brands. But then the luxury fashion industry tapped into it too and said, right, well, we need, you know, if we get people in the store more, they're going to buy more because

we're changing it up all the time. And so that's when they started doing more and more seasons and more and more collections. And when John Galliano left Dior, when he first started at Dior, he was doing six shows a year. When he left between his house and Dior, he was doing 32 collections a year. basically once a week, something, something new every week. It's shoes, bathing suits, underwear, ready to wear fur. There's something new to put in the store every week at Dior, which is just like Zara. So what's the difference? The price, but the model is exactly the same. And they basically, they got us addicted to shopping. It's like a drug. We're addicted to shopping. We go into the store. We're like, I need a fix. I need to do this. We call it retail therapy. I mean, right? And we're going to

go buy some more and go buy some more and go buy some more. And then what do we do with it? The average garment today is worn seven times before it's thrown away. Wow. Seven times. Thrown away. Yeah. And in China, it's three times three you don't even need to wash it well that's the problem some of these clothes that the fast fashion brands cost more to dry clean than they

did to buy it so you're like why would i spend 25 bucks to dry clean this dress when it only cost me 12.99 right i'll just toss it and go buy a new one. Okay, but is there any benefit to the consumer of this model? Or is it just addictive? I mean, there's- It's just like a drug. Yeah. It's just like a drug. Is it fulfilling any actual need that we have?

I mean, many of our modern innovations in retail or industry, they do provide something that even fast food gives people a reliable meal at like a pretty low price and, you know, served a need for busy people. And we can criticize it. We can say, hey, at least it's giving people this one thing. But is this doing anything to, you know, the fact that you can go to an H&M now and buy, you know, a shirt for a dollar and wear it seven times and throw it away? Is that is that at all an improvement or is it in your view? No, it does, as Anna Wintour told me, bring better fashion to Is that, is that at all an improvement or is it in your view? It does. As Anna Wintour told me,

bring better fashion to more people, meaning that you can, you know, that just because it's cheap doesn't mean it has to be ugly. It can be cute, cute and sexy. Right. So there are people on a fixed budget who are saying,

but if you take away fast fashion, I won't have any decent, anything decent to wear. That's kind of cool and cute. Or sexy. Right. Cause I can't afford the really well-made stuff. Cause I can't afford you. have any decent anything decent to wear that's kind of cool and cute or sexy right because i can't afford the really well-made stuff because i can't afford gucci right that's very good for you but i can't afford it and and then that's one of the problems that this fast fashion revolution has caused is that the price of fashion dropped and that mid- range area kind of disappeared. So it's either super cheap

or super expensive. Yeah. And one of the things that I learned while writing this book was that everyone kept telling me and I kept reading that fashion has never been cheaper than it is today. And I was like, what does this mean? So then I started thinking about it and I realized that, you know, the clothes that my 18, 19 year old daughter was wearing and buying and wearing were costing her less than I was paying for clothes when I was her age in the late seventies and early eighties. And she earns $10 to $12 an hour babysitting. And I was earning $1 an hour babysitting. So she has 10 times the purchasing power

at a cheaper price. Wow. Not even adjusted for inflation. It's just straight up cheaper. Straight up. Wow. And then I start, then I read a piece from the New Yorker

in about, from about 1940. And they were talking about clothes during the Depression. And they were citing some of the prices of the French fashion houses at the time. And they were about the same price as the long goodbye, the secretary special. Sort of think about the suit that Lauren Bacall wears in the big sleep, right? It's kind of the secretary special or one of those cute little dresses that they wore with a brooch. special or one of those cute little dresses that they wore with a brooch. And they were selling for between $19.99 and $25.99 for a nice day dress, a little suit. And this is at the height of the depression. And that is what you would pay today for the same thing at H&M or Inzara. And I thought,

right, we have a lot more purchasing power today than we did during the depression. Yeah. But the clothes cost the same price. Now, why do they cost the same price? And that's because everything else has gone up and the price of everything else has gone up. So then I saw a pie chart, you know, those pie charts where they like show how you're dividing what you're spending is in your life. So you spend like so much on house and so much on insurance and so much on food and so much on utilities. And in 1960, we spent, I can't remember the figure exactly, but we spent in the 20%-ish, 20, 25% on clothing.

And today it's in single digits of that pie chart, but we buy five times more clothes than we did then. Maybe more, maybe six or seven times more clothes than we did when this pie chart was originally designed. So that shows that we are dedicating less of our monthly or annual budget to clothes. And we're buying five to six times more clothes with that sliver of what we used to spend. Now, the reason that these clothes cost so little is because during the age of globalization, we moved all of our manufacturing of clothes offshore. Now, we've heard all about this with NAFTA, and people are complaining about how NAFTA gutted the American industry across the board, not just in the fashion

industry and the textile industry, but across the board, automobile and everything else, right? Everything went overseas. And that's when the owners of companies, the CEOs and the shareholders got wildly, wildly, wildly rich. And, you know, we talk about the salary of CEOs going up, you know, hundreds and thousands of percentage points versus the average worker. But at the same time, and we lost all these jobs. So then so many people went on the dole and towns were gutted and the South, you drive across the South and it's just heartbreaking, right? Yeah. The hillbilly elegy. South. And they went to places like Bangladesh, China, Southeast Asia,

Vietnam, Cambodia, Myanmar. And where people are paid a fraction. Not even a fraction. Like, tiny, tiny. When I went to Bangladesh for this book, people were earning $68 a month.

Wow. To sew clothes. $68 a month, which was half a living wage, which is half of what you need to house, clothe and feed your family. They don't get vacation. They don't get overtime. They don't get maternity leave. They don't have any healthcare benefits.

And the brands that outsource to these factories, all they do is subcontract. They are not related. They are not responsible for anything. So when a factory goes down or a factory goes up in flames, you know, when it collapses or it goes up in flames, they can say, not our problem. That's their problem. Somebody else owns the factory. We just, we just contract them. We have no. And so some, a company say like Ralph Lauren, Ralph Lauren in the old days made their own clothes. They had factories.

They made their clothes. Then they started offshoring to places like China and Hong Kong and elsewhere in Southeast Asia or maybe Central America. And so then they became a company that just designs things. And then they send it off to have it made. And then it comes back and then they sell them. But they actually don't make their clothes anymore. Right. And so that's why the price dropped.

Because everyone's getting nickel and dime and squeezed, squeezed, squeezed to offer these brands the lowest price possible. So if they're selling it to you for $100, that means the person who made it was paid $10. Not even $5. Yeah. And so that's why the price of clothes went down. the person who made it was paid 10, not even five. Yeah. And so that's why the price of clothes went down, because they don't have to pay all that other expense, benefits, pensions, vacations, unions, la, la, la, la. That's gone.

And also things like, there used to be corporate paternalism, where if the factory was in your town, they also underwrote the Little League team. They gave money to the local library. They sponsored the football lights, right? The stadium lights. They did all those things. And I didn't have to spend money on that anymore either.

So it was just all profit, profit, profit, profit, profit. And they could drop the prices because it costs them nothing to produce everything. I mean, when you look at it that way, it's like we went through this massive change in how our clothing was made, where we offshore it, pay people nothing. We sort of export misery to other places.

And it wasn't misery when it was well run in america the golden age of manufacturing in america was great as we see in something like the marvelous mrs mazel you know mr mazel the father-in-law owns a dress company in the garment district and we go into that factory and he says you know pick out a dress right or in goodfellas you know go pick out a dress go pick out a fur coat that was made in new New York City. And the life was okay. People lived well. They went, you know, they had retreats in places like the Poconos for the workers. They had, you know, baseball teams and basketball teams and theater groups, and they lived well. It was a good, it was a good life. Yeah. This, this change solved a problem that we didn't have. I mean, I think in the Depression,

spending 25% of your income on your clothes is probably too much. I know they had to go to long lengths to preserve clothes at the time. They had to starch the collars and bleach everything and that sort of thing. But I would imagine in the 50s, 60s, and 70s. My grandfather during the Depression owned two suits.

And he wore one all week. And then he went to the dry cleaners and dropped it off and picked up the other one. And then wore that the whole week. But like the situation that we have now as consumers, where we pay pennies, we pay tiny amounts for bad clothes that fall apart, you know,

like you go to H and M you're not getting great stuff. You know, you get it, you get that little pop of, Oh, I've got something new, but you're not getting great stuff you know you get you get that little pop of oh i've got something new but you're not getting something that's enriching your life that's what they call it in england the thrill of the till uh and so and and on top of this it's creating massive waste and so it seems to have gotten worse in every way versus what it was a couple of decades ago. And every way. Yeah. Yeah. Well, look, I have so many more questions. I want to ask a lot more about the labor piece on the, you know, on the other side of the ocean from where I'm sitting right now. But we got to take a really quick break. We'll be right back with more Dana Thomas. This is wonderful. We're back with Dana Thomas. I want to ask more about when I go to the

shop. We've talked a lot about my experience going to the store and wow, I pay so little for clothes that fall apart as I take them off the rack. But I want to talk about the person at the other end of the chain. Actually, I suppose the absolute other end of the chain would be the folks making the textiles, growing the initial plant materials or doing whatever chemistry results in these fabrics. But let's talk about the person who's making the clothes. Who's sewing. Sewing, yes. Thank you. So you talked about how incredibly low these folks are being paid. We always say, oh, well, isn't the cost of living low there? But you said, no, actually, they're being paid half of a living wage. They're being paid far less than what they need to.

But I've also heard this line many times that I think I read this in like a Nicholas Friedman column like 10 years ago about how these are the stages that economies go through. You know, if you look at the Lower East Side, you had, you know, the Jewish textile industry or you had immigrants, you had folks working in sweatshop conditions and then they bettered their condition and it was unfortunate. But that's the stage you have to go through. And that's what's happening in Myanmar or one of those other places. And this is, you know, it's not perfect, but it's a step on the way to a better future. You're shaking your head as I say this. Please tell me why.

Well, because the only reason it got better in New York City was because we had the famous Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire where more than a hundred women died and they were jumping out of the building on fire and landing on the sidewalk. Okay. Let's just think about that for a second. Yeah. It was the second worst business catastrophe in New York city after nine 11. Wow. And after that, a wonderful woman named Frances Perkins was tapped by then-Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt to reform working conditions in downtown Manhattan, in the sweatshops.

If you are ever in New York and you have an afternoon to kick back and do some sightseeing, skip the Met and go visit the Tenement Museum. I've been there. It's amazing. It's amazing. On Orchard Street. It's wonderful. It's so fascinating. And when you see that, then you go, yeah, I don't buy any of this stuff that Nicholas Kristof and the others are putting out. And the only so the reason that it reformed.

Nick Kristof, sorry, I confused my New York Times columnist. I said Nicholas Friedman. You blended them together. I combined them. They say the same shit. They say the same shit. And so the only reason that New York got better was because Francis Perkins and her committee passed some law saying you just can't do that anymore. Sorry, you got you can't lock your exits of your fire exits. You can't let people smoke on the factory floor. You can't, you know, no, no, no, no, no no and then the workers organized and formed a union and then they were unions and and then francis perkins was tapped by then president roosevelt to be the secretary of labor first woman in the cabinet held the position longer than any other cabinet member in the history of the country. She was she was secretary of labor for 12 years. And during that 12 years, she, Francis Perkins, is the one who put through things like the 40 hour work week, paid vacation, you know, like things that we just think we've always had when we did until the until the Depression, until the New Deal, until Francis Perkins.

And because all because of the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire. Now, the same thing has happened in Bangladesh, sort of after the Rana Plaza factory collapse. But why did it happen? Not because we had some trailblazing, fabulous and, you know, courageous politician like Franklin Roosevelt take a courageous and ahead of her time woman suffragette, Frances Perkins, and say, fix this, honey. And she did. Fix this, honey. And she did. But because the brands were afraid of the bad publicity, plain and simple. There had been a terrible fire in Bangladesh in 2012. Tell me about this.

Called the Tazreen Factory Fire, where more than 100 people perished, just like in Triangle. And it was almost 100 years to the date of the triangle factory. And six months later, we had the Rana Plaza factory collapse, where more than 2,000 people were killed. And the back-to-back was like a one-two punch. And the brands, there were brands who said, you know, we didn't produce there. But still, their clothes said on the label, label Made in Bangladesh and people would be freaking out that their clothes were Made in Bangladesh where factories collapse and kill and crush people. And it was horrific. I've been there and I've met with and I detail this in the book, the whole story of the Tazreen fire and the Rana Plaza collapse. And I went to Bangladesh on the fifth anniversary and met survivors of that collapse and heard their stories and watched them cry and saw their injuries and that they walk on canes and that they can't work and PTSD like you cannot imagine.

And what happened was then the brands got together and said, okay, we will have a binding agreement that enforces factory safety. But it's minimum stuff that they're asking for, like that we don't lock the fire exits because they lock the fire exits because they're afraid people will steal stuff or that, you know, there's a fire escape or that there's a sprinkler system or that there aren't exposed wires dangling from the ceilings. You know, really basic stuff. When I got to Dhaka in Bangladesh, I was off the plane half an hour and I was already visiting a sweatshop. And it was the... I have been covering the fashion industry for nearly 30 years.

And I know, you know, I've visited factories all over the world and I've heard about sweatshops. Nothing prepared me for what I saw as a sweatshop in Bangladesh. Oh my gosh. Tell me about it. It was beyond imagination. Already the walls looked like somebody had taken kind of a portage on

and just spun it around and everything went slop against the walls. Okay, nasty, nasty. There was one staircase and it was encumbered by these huge cartons of a jeans company that you and I've heard of that was going to ship out. There was no fire, you know, escape of any sort. The windows all had bars on them anyway. So if there is a fire, too bad for you.

And then the glass was all broken to get air. The floors were rough hewn. Everyone worked barefoot. I'm not sure why they're barefoot. It might have to do with something like hiding stuff in their shoes. Some of them stood on corrugated cardboard patches on the floor so they wouldn't get splinters on their feet. There were people as young as 12, 13 working in that factory and as old as 70. They were all really skinny. Their eyes were sunken in. They had looked like their souls had been rushed. They were using ancient, ancient, ancient material machinery, dangerously, not well-trained. I thought that guy, he's about to cut off his hand. Oh my gosh. You know, like using a jigsaw and cutting it through five times as much fabric as you should freehand without any protection.

Nobody's wearing masks to not breathe in the fibers. Nobody's wearing goggles to not get all this stuff flying in their eyes. Nobody's I mean, and it was 120 degrees and they had fans blowing around dust. There's bolts of fabric on the floor to trip over. There's leftover fabric piled up here and there. Fabrics are very flammable. People were smoking. It was insane. I was like, where am I? I am in the fashion equivalent of hell. How many people are in this place? 50, 60, 100. Wow. And these are folks, again, being paid extremely little.

Oh, and those people were being paid far less than the $68 a month. I would guess they were making half that. Wow. And no overtime. But they would be forced to work overtime. Slavery, essentially. I want to know what brand name you saw. I can't say.

That was part of the deal. You can't say? It was part of the deal sneaking me in there as I promised I wouldn't reveal who was in there. But this is a brand that. I didn't want to put the people who got me in in jeopardy. I understand. But it's a brand that if I were to go down to the. I mean, it's not Levi's, Wrangler, or Lee.

You know, it's just like some jeans brand. But if I said it, you'd be like, oh, yeah, I've heard of them. Yeah. Okay. And they'd be on sale in my local mall most likely. Yeah. Yeah. You'd find it easily enough. And I mean, here's the thing that sort of baffles me. We've been hearing these stories for decades. When I was a teenager was the, or my, yeah, my late teens were the height of, you know, the movement against Nike and sweatshops. And it was extremely well publicized. And it struck me for a while that, hold on a second, no one says that about Nike anymore.

No one's like, uh-oh, Nike doesn't make sweatshops. Because Nike's worked really hard that that doesn't, you know, because they're worried about tarnishing their image. They're not actually worried about the people they're taking advantage of. Yeah. it's just pr and it worked i mean it's now nike is one of the most beloved bands brands in fashion they also get better at hiding it yeah i don't think nike does i think nike's careful but there are other brands that are good at hiding it so you uh how do they do that how do they do that? How do they go through that transformation? How do they hide it? Oh, well, I mean,

there's nobody like me out there digging up, trying to find them. I mean, in my first book, Deluxe, I was at a conference in Hong Kong, a big luxury conference, and the CEO of the conference said, we do not produce in China. And the day before, I'd been in a factory

and saw them producing in China. I'm like, you're such a liar and you're a publicly traded company. That's fraud. Is it, is it the subcontractor thing? It's like, oh, well we don't produce in China. They say they subcontracted. Yeah, definitely. Definitely. The good news is, and that's why we call Fashionopolis my book, the book of hope. This all sounds like so down, like, oh my God, I'm never going shopping again. This is the most. Yes, you brought us to our low point.

We are at the low point. But in fact, we call it the book of hope because there is this whole movement that's a backlash to all that. Thank goodness. And there's a bunch of young entrepreneurs who are saying, we don't want to be a part of that. We don't want to do any of that. Thank goodness. And there's a bunch of young entrepreneurs who are saying, we don't want to be a part of that. We don't want to do any of that. We don't want to even come close to being following that business model. And they've created a new business model where they're sourcing sustainably. They're paying their workers well. They're doing made to order, not made to order, but well, direct to consumer already, as opposed to having middlemen. So it's, that takes the price lower, but then they say like, there's a company I

spotlight called Alabama Channing. That's out of Florence, Alabama, muscle shoals, you know, the R and B Mecca. And, uh, and she doesn't make anything until you've ordered it on her website. And then, you know, you order it on Monday and you'll get it by Friday and she has somebody make it. So there's no waste, zero waste. There are brands that want to do zero waste, organically sourced, people paid, not just a living wage, but above a living wage and or minimum wage, you know,

whether it's home or abroad. American Apparel for all of its horrors, and there were a lot of horrors yeah it did actually pay its workers above the california they paid their workers very well they had their factory in la they made everything in la in that factory and they paid everyone really really well so they showed that you know besides the whole sex, nasty thing that was going on with Dove Charney, that the business model worked and you can make a decent profit on it. Well, Dove Charney also, you know, after he was ousted from American Apparel and that collapsed, he started a new company called Los Angeles Apparel, which I know because it's in Los Angeles where I live. There's billboards all over the place. Yes.

And yes, he still has a factory in Los Angeles apparel, which I know because it's in Los Angeles where I live. There's billboards all over the place. Yes. And yes, he still has a factory in Los Angeles, but but his factory was shut down because everybody got covid and another reason. But he still he does prove on the business level that you can have a fashion factory, a fashion company in America, make everything in America above the board, follow the rules, pay everyone well, and make an absolutely decent sum of money. Yes. Better than that. So the old model isn't really, you know, the way things are done and have been done 250 years.

I mean, we forget that the Industrial Revolution began with the fashion industry. It was Richard Arkwright who started cotton mills and they were using the cotton to make clothes and, you know, and linens for your home. Yeah. And that kicked it off. It wasn't steam engines. It wasn't all the right. It was cotton milling.

Yeah. 250 years. And what did they do? They hired women and they hired children and they paid them nothing and they treated them badly. And then they died young and sick the same. And they got really, really rich off the backs of these really poor people. And it's the same business model that's going on today with the globalization and offshoring of fashion production. Same, same thing. But there are companies that are moving.

There is hope. So that's why I say with the book that I sort of structured it like Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. There's the ghost of fashion past, which is terrible. So scary. There's the ghost of fashion present, which is like

it's okay. There's bad and there's good, but there's bad and there's good. But the ghost of fashion future could be great if we decide to change. Yeah. And we can change in different ways. We can buy less. We can buy smarter. We should pay more for our clothes.

And while people are like, but I can't afford it. It's like, actually, you can. Because we proved that with that pie chart I talked about in the beginning in 1960, where we did devote more money, more of our income to clothing than we do today. We did pay more for clothing. So instead of buying 10 T-shirts at $10 a piece, you just buy one at $70. That'll last you so much longer, will be so much more beautiful. And you've actually saved $30. You know, the funny thing about that is, well, first of all, I agree that there are many cases

where you can buy, you can spend more on one thing that lasts longer. And I try to buy things that way myself. Like our friend, the blue jean that we were talking about earlier. Yeah. I've been wearing the same pair of jeans for two or three years and, you know, and I'll continue to wear it for a little while longer. But the odd thing about the American economy is that there's certain things that have become that little sliver of the pie chart. Like you said, clothing, food. We now spend very little, a very low percentage of our income on food compared to other folks elsewhere in the world and compared to earlier in American history. to other folks elsewhere in the world and compared to earlier in American history. But then there's other parts of the pie chart that are massive.

Housing and health care are these huge parts where people are spending half of their income on housing and one percent on food. And so it's a little hard for me to say, hey, you know what? Anyone can afford to spend a little bit more on clothing when when there are these other pressures on them that are so massive. And that's an entirely different episode of this show why how is it we've done multiple episodes of this but um i think we we can say hey we don't need to spend only one percent of our income as a nation on clothing like on a societal level investing a little bit more in this part of our lives and this part of our paying those workers more is possible. By less, by better.

Yeah. And it's because we're contributing to the whole thing. It's a big economic picture to think about. But if you think about the factories and the jobs that went offshore, And the jobs that went offshore. Thus, we lost all those work jobs in the south of the United States and the eastern seaboard in manufacturing. And then those people who lost their jobs are buying those clothes that are made offshore. They're contributing to their misery, in a sense. Because they're propping up, they're validating this business model that gutted their lives. Yeah. It's a big think idea.

I know. So you got to wrap your head around this. But if you buy into the thing that just ruined your life, you're supporting this monster that ruined your life. Right? Yeah. to the thing that just ruined your life you're supporting this monster that ruined your life right yeah so better to buy local if you can pay more and keep it longer buy better buy buy less buy better is what i say my daughter my like i was telling you she's now 20 year old daughter's wearing my blue jeans that i bought in the 1980s because they were good Levi's. And back then, if you own three pairs of jeans, you basically you had three pairs of jeans. We bought the kind that weren't pre-washed. They were stiff as all get out.

It was like putting on cardboard. Right. So you had the first pair shrink to fit. You like put them on. You got in your bathtub and you sat there and what? Yeah. Right. And then you wash them and you wore them.

You wash me, wore them. And after about six months, they started not And then you wash them and you wore them and you wash them and you wore them. And after about six months, they started not giving you a wedgie when you wore them. And then while they're starting to break in and get good, then you sort of saved your money one year on and you bought the next pair.

And so then you're starting the cycle and then you had like a three-year cycle going on. So by the third year, that first pair was getting really good, right? The second one was getting decent. The first ones were giving you the wedgie. And then that first pair would eventually wear out and you turn them into cutoffs. So you kept them and you're like, but you paid more. I paid more then for a pair of 501 blue jeans than they cost today. And I was earning a fraction of what I earned today. So it just shows that we kind of, you saved your money. You saved your money

to buy your blue jeans. You didn't just go out on a Tuesday afternoon and go, I got to go buy a new pair of blue jeans. You saved, you're like, right. In April, I'm going to go buy a new pair of blue jeans. And then you had this whole project of making them work for you. And because of that, they've lasted 30 years. They've been sitting in my closet. Now my daughter wears them and she gets compliments all the time. Those are bad-ass jeans and they're worn so well. And it's like, yeah, well, and they were tailored. We took them in, you know, like we made them look. We have to get back to that idea that, you know, you buy something, you love it, you wear it. If it wears out, you patch it up.

There are three, the three R's I write about in the book that are really important. Resale. If you're tired of something, don't ever, ever, ever throw it in the trash. Please do not throw clothes in the trash. Resell them. There's loads of resale. There's the real, real, but there's all sorts. There's Vestiaire Collective. There's eBay. There's all sorts of resale places. Resell them. Get your

money, get some money coming in and give that garment a second life. Somebody else will love it. As a friend of mine says, you know, pre-loved. They're pre-loved. Give them to somebody else who wants the pre-loved. There's resale. There's repair, repair, repair, repair. It's kind of fun. Take some sewing classes, some embroidery classes. You can do it on YouTube. You can do it on Zoom and do needlework and do like what they call a parent mending where you can see that it's been patched up sort of like in the 60s when we did that cool embroidery and mending and patching, right?

And then there's renting. If you've got a big fancy gig coming up and you need a gown for it, don't go spend $3,000 on a gown that you're going to wear twice. Go spend $300 renting something that you would have never bought otherwise. You will look fantastic.

You will feel like Cinderella. Yeah. And then you return it and it doesn't hang in your closet gathering dust going, oh, I'll never wear that again. Yeah. And then you return it and it doesn't hang in your closet gathering dust going, oh, I'll never wear that again. Yeah. I mean, men rent tuxedos all the time, right? Yeah.

You rented your tuxedo for the prom. I did. I did indeed. But your date, she bought a dress. Now, two thoughts this gives me. One is in addition to learning embroidery and sewing, you can go to your local dry cleaner and get things tailored. And it was so late in life that I learned, oh, there's a guy I can bring my pants to and pay five or ten dollars and they'll patch the holes in my pants. Like and these exist in every strip mall in America.

They'll replace the buttons. They'll stitch up that seam for you and rehem it. Yeah. They'll even replace the lining if it wears out. Yeah, absolutely. And it feels so good. Support your local artisans. I've got a pair of Uniqlo jeans that I bought for like $30, cheap ass jeans, and they fit great.

And I've been getting them repaired once a year for the past like eight years. That's it. Because the crotch blows out over and over again. That's it. That's it. That's it. once a year for the past like eight years because the crotch blows out over and over again. Yeah. But here, here's a, here's a question I've always had. And you're the perfect person to ask this because when I started paying more attention to clothes, you know, in my late twenties, uh, it was the sort of like revival of classic menswear, uh, movement, um, of, you know, where a tailored clothes and like buying nice, you know, leather shoes that you can get fixed up and things like that. And there's a lot of that culture still embedded in men's

clothes, buying tailored clothing, buying resoluble, you know, Brooks Brothers shoes, sorry, Brooks Brothers suits, Allen Edmonds shoes, that sort of thing. And my girlfriend at the same time was buying shoes and we were like, hold on a second, the shoes that she's buying, they're almost never resoluble in that way. The clothes are not designed to be repaired. And like, there's plenty of crappy men's clothes as well. But there's still this strain of like, you know, the average thing that a businessman wears is going to be a lot more repairable and a lot longer lasting. And I've noticed that gender divide in men and women's clothes, that fast fashion happened, seemed to happen more to women's clothes.

And I wondered if you had any idea why that was. Well, I think it goes back, as I say in everything in France, where I am, it all goes back to Versailles. It all goes back to Versailles and Marie Antoinette. And how you had to dress like, you know, you had to change your fashion like the queen in order to keep up with the court and the women couldn't be seen in the same thing twice.

And there is that in women's versus men's, you know. Like I said, my grandfather during the Depression had two suits and he just switched them out each week. A woman would not be able to go to the office every day in the same suit. They'd be like, you wore that yesterday. Did you not go home?

All right. Yeah. But a guy can show up in exactly the same outfit all week long. Yeah. So. So it's, you know, fashion is a, is a inherently a female thing that, you know, we have to change it up. We had to change it up.

We had to change it up. But there, again, like there, like I said, there's the three R's resale, rent, repair. There's also vintage. And we didn't talk about vintage, but vintage is really important. What a friend of mine, like he said, is pre--loved and he also says it's chic to repeat i love that saying chic to repeat like you can it's very chic to just keep wearing the same thing and say you know yeah like my daughter these were my mom's jeans from the 1980s so chic right um and so you can go to great vintage shops like Decades on Melrose and find pre-loved clothes for a fraction of the price. And that's what Stella McCartney told me for the book.

She said, listen, if you can't afford me the first time around, and I know I'm a luxury fashion designer, most people can't, then buy it on the sale. Buy it on the second sale. Buy it on the third sale. Buy it vintage. sale buy it on this third sale buy it vintage yeah and and there and you can get great great stuff vintage on resale sites you can sell the things you don't want anymore but you can also yeah instead of spending a fortune on something junky that's going to or spending say you're spending your budget's 100 bucks instead of buying a dress at fast fashion, that's going to fall apart and look terrible after three wears,

go find something really great. That's vintage. Yeah. That's beautifully made and has, and has a life in it. And you're carrying on that life. I love that. And that's a wonderful thing that we can do individually to assuage

ourselves of the guilt and help a little bit. But I also know that the changes that you're talking about were not driven by individual choices. They were driven by top down changes by the clothing producers. Yeah. And so I'm curious if there are any policy changes that you want to see in terms of trade policy, in terms of regulation, anything like that. You know, could Congress pass something that would improve this? And what would it be? And in fact, I am very heartened to say that Germany is now passing legislation,

hopefully, I think it's, if it's not done, it's nearly done, to require factories that are exporting clothes into Germany to meet their factory standards, their standards. Like you can't treat your people badly and bring your clothes into Germany to meet their factory standards, their standards. Like you can't treat your people badly and bring your clothes into Germany. And I was just speaking to somebody yesterday who was putting together, if I can find my notes, legislation on the federal level and on New York state level to get factories, to get fashion companies to be more responsible. They're

working on two different bills on the state level in New York and on the federal level to hold businesses accountable, to regulate the business. I mean, if you think about every other industry, they're regulated. Even if they're deregulated, they're regulated. You know, that somebody can't just fly any sort of airplane into America as an airline. It has to meet FAA standards, right? Yes. That you can't just sell any kind of junky car in America. It has to meet federal standards.

You can't sell any kind of chicken in a grocery store. It has to meet USDA standards. Yes. But we do not have these standards in the fashion industry. And that's because people say that fashion is frivolous when it's not, as we have already discussed. make it the world a better place in fashion are lobbying the biden administration to appoint what we're calling a fashion czar like the drugs are like the climate czar a fashion czar who will basically say you know clothes should be made in factories that meet the standards of american factories even if they're halfway around the world that the clothes that the factory you know the

clothing materials meet our environmental standards even if they're made halfway around the world, that the factory, you know, the clothing materials meet our environmental standards, even if they're made halfway around the world, that, you know, there isn't so much waste, that people are paid a living wage, that there are no sweatshops in America because there are sweatshops in downtown LA. I have seen them. Yeah, really? I've toured them where people pay $ dollars an hour even though the minimum wage in california is now what 10 12 14 dollars an hour it's on its way to 15 yeah it's on its way to 15 it goes up every year two dollars an hour and uh and so you know the fashion czar would crack down

on all that stuff and get some legislation because this is the one super mega industry that has zero regulation. Yeah, we should. And we could, and it's possible to have it. And like Francis Perkins did, you know, and then when we do, it moves into a golden age and it's all great. Francis Perkins gave us regulation because of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire and we need it again. It got lost along the way and we need it again to protect our fellow americans humanity and to protect the

planet and if that is what happens if we take fashion seriously though then we can make those changes and make everything better because i mean what do we do when we get up in the morning, we brush our teeth and then we get dressed. Get dressed. Dana Thomas, thank you so much for being here. This is a wonderful interview. I thank you for this. Thank you for the work. And you're such a good book plugger,

but I want you to say the name of the book one more time for everybody. Fashionopolis, The Price of Fast Fashion and the Future of Clothes. People ask me why Fashionopolis? Well, i started reading plato as one does and plato talked about the polis which means the city the earth of the city in in greek and he he said that you know it should the perfect polis is a just city yeah a just city. Yeah. A just city. And I just loved that idea that we are being just, right?

Yeah. And so I thought fashion should be too, that we have justice, humanity, equality, goodness. I agree. Thank you so much for being here, Dana. Thank you. My pleasure. Anytime.

Well, thank you once again to Dana Thomas for coming on the show. If you'd like a copy of her book, Fashionopolis, you can get it at factuallypod.com slash books. That's factuallypod.com slash books. And you'll be supporting the show and your local bookstore. I want to thank our producers, Kimmy Lucas and Sam Roudman, our engineer, Andrew Carson, Andrew WK for our theme song, the fine folks at Falcon Northwest for building me the custom gaming PC that I am recording this very episode on. You can find me online at adamconover.net or at Adam Conover,

wherever you get your social media. Until next time, we'll see you on Factually. Thank you so much for listening.