Podcast
Freakonomics Radio
It was written in the voice of a pencil and detailed the complex global supply chain required for its production, used as an argument for free market capitalism.
My family tree begins with what in fact is a tree, a cedar of straight grain that grows in Northern California and Oregon.
— Episode: 236. How Can This Possibly Be True?
Episode: 236. How Can This Possibly Be True?
It was written in the voice of a pencil and detailed the complex global supply chain required for its production, used as an argument for free market capitalism.
My family tree begins with what in fact is a tree, a cedar of straight grain that grows in Northern California and Oregon.
Simple yet not a single person on the face of this earth knows how to make me.
Nearly millions of human beings have had a hand in my creation, no one of whom even knows more than a very few of the others.
The miracle of this pencil isn't that nobody knows how to make it. The miracle of the pencil is how did it get made?
If you can become aware of the miraculousness, which I symbolize, you can help save the freedom mankind is so unhappily losing.