Shopping for Groceries: The Hunger Games

About this episode

Grocery shopping in a supermarket is such a commonplace part of everyday existence that it is routinely mocked as a ritual of narcotized consumerism. In fact, the modern supermarket is a radical break with the past—and a nexus of innovations central to contemporary life. Markets have existed for millennia, of course. But they were nothing like the modern grocery store, with its shopping carts, self-service selection, shelves of branded, packaged goods, and lineup of cash registers. Walk the store aisles with Virginia Postrel and Charles C. Mann as they explore the now-invisible network of technologies that arose to create the supermarket. Podcast website: http://abundance.institute/EverydayAbundance Nowadays a Cracker Barrel is a restaurant where you eat down-home food amid rustic décor. But crackers and other provisions used to actually come in big wooden barrels from which store proprietors scooped out and weighed goods for customers. They represented a whole lost world of grocery shopping. Service was personal, choices were limited, prices were high, and quality was inconsistent. This is where “bottom of the barrel” originates. You didn’t want crackers—or flour or anything e