Episode Details

In this episode, we explore six years of american historical whiplash. So imagine waking up in January of 2020 and someone sits you down to tell you the future. Oh, man. You'd think they're crazy. Right. They tell you that in the next few years, the global economy is just going to fall completely through the floor. A mob is going to storm the United States Capitol. A sitting president is going to drop out. just months before an election. And you personally are going to struggle to buy baby formula or toilet paper at your local grocery store. Yeah, I mean, you probably think they were pitching you like a dystopian movie script or something. Exactly. But that is exactly the historical whiplash we are diving into today. So welcome to today's deep dive. We were taking a really comprehensive look at the 2020s in the United States so far. Yeah, basically starting from January 2020 right up to today, in 2020. No, I remember walking into grocery stores in 2022 and seeing entire aisles completely bare. The baby formula shortage was insane. Right. And the mechanics of that shortage perfectly illustrate the systemic fragility we're talking about. The source points out that by May 2022, nationwide out -of -stock rates for infant formula hit 43%. 43%. Yeah. To put that in perspective, a normal out -of -stock rate is maybe like 2 % to 10%. How does almost half the country's baby formula just vanish? It was a perfect storm, basically, compounding failures. You already had the baseline global shipping crisis started by the pandemic, right? Shipping containers in the wrong ports, labor shortages. Right. But then a major domestic formula plant was shut down due to contamination concerns, which triggered a massive product recall. And because the U .S. market is highly concentrated among just a few manufacturers