Planet Money
00:00:00 · S0, Jacob Goldstein, Jane Brox, John Edmond
[00:00:00] S0: This message comes from Capella University. That spark you feel, that's your drive for more. Capella University's FlexPath learning format lets you earn your degree at your pace without putting life on pause. Learn more at capella.edu. [00:00:15] S1: Hey. It's Jacob Goldstein. There is an episode of Planet Money that I cohosted a long time ago that I still think about a lot, like, at least once a week. And at the heart of the show is what I think is the biggest, most important lesson that I learned covering economics, and that is this. The pie can get bigger. It is at least theoretically possible for everybody to be better off. The economist whose work is at the center of the show is a guy named Bill Nordhaus. And a few years after we talked to him for this episode, he actually won the Econ Nobel for his work on the economics of climate change. Last week, Bill Nordhaus died at the age of 85. And so today, we are rerunning this episode in his memory. I hope you'll like it. [00:01:02] S2: This is Planet Money from NPR. [00:01:07] S1: Long before there were light bulbs, there was fat. For thousands of years, if you wanted to light up your cave, your mud hut, or if you were really lucky, your castle, you had to find some fat, something to use for a wick, maybe some moss, maybe a piece of fabric, and you had to light it on fire. This was not easy. Even today, it's a hard way to get light. [00:01:31] S3: Adam and I. [00:01:32] S1: Yeah. Hi. Do you sell fat, maybe beef fat? [00:01:36] S3: No. No. I don't carry that. No.
00:01:36 · John Edmond, Paul Israel, Jacob Goldstein, David Kestenbaum
[00:01:36] S3: No. No. I don't carry that. No. [00:01:38] S4: Okay. Thanks very much. Thank you. [00:01:42] S1: Hi. Do you sell fat, [00:01:45] S5: like beef [00:01:45] S1: sell any of that. Suet? No. Okay. Okay. Thanks very much. Tzuszitos. Yeah. Hi. Do you sell beef fat? [00:01:54] S3: Yeah. That we have all the time. [00:01:55] S1: How much is that? [00:01:55] S3: $2.98 a pound. [00:01:57] S4: Okay. Great. Thanks very much. [00:01:58] S3: You're welcome. Bye. [00:02:00] S1: I got two pounds. A big nasty lump of fat came from around the cow's kidney. I got some twine from the hardware store, and I went home to my apartment to try and make candles. God. It's a little it's a little harder to chop than you might think. Kinda sticks to itself. I put the fat on the stove. It's pretty melted. It smells really nasty. It's like animal nasty. I strained it, then I started dipping the wicks into it. Dipping. Dipping. You have to let the fat dry, then you have to dip the wick some more. More dipping. It was maybe, I don't know, 45 or so of dipping. Dip. Dip. I got kinda dip crazy in there. Dip. Yep. After hours of work, not counting raising the cow or killing the cow or making the twine, I had six tiny, crooked, smelly candles. Candles. Hello, I and welcome to Planet Money. I'm Jacob Goldstein.
00:02:00 · Jacob Goldstein, David Kestenbaum, S6
[00:02:00] S1: I got two pounds. A big nasty lump of fat came from around the cow's kidney. I got some twine from the hardware store, and I went home to my apartment to try and make candles. God. It's a little it's a little harder to chop than you might think. Kinda sticks to itself. I put the fat on the stove. It's pretty melted. It smells really nasty. It's like animal nasty. I strained it, then I started dipping the wicks into it. Dipping. Dipping. You have to let the fat dry, then you have to dip the wick some more. More dipping. It was maybe, I don't know, 45 or so of dipping. Dip. Dip. I got kinda dip crazy in there. Dip. Yep. After hours of work, not counting raising the cow or killing the cow or making the twine, I had six tiny, crooked, smelly candles. Candles. Hello, I and welcome to Planet Money. I'm Jacob Goldstein. [00:03:14] S5: And I'm David Kestenbaum. Today on the show, the story of how we got from dim little candles made out of cow fat to as much light as we want at the flick of a switch. And I don't think I'm exaggerating here. This one little story, it explains why we are where we are today. Why billions of people don't have to worry about starving today. Why we aren't all subsistence farmers. Why we can afford to have artists and massage therapists and plumbers. And, yes, radio reporters doing stories about the history of light. [00:03:50] S6: Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors.
00:03:50 · S6, S0, David Kestenbaum, Jacob Goldstein
[00:03:50] S6: Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors. [00:03:54] S0: This message comes from Whole Foods Market. Host Thanksgiving with industry leading quality standards from Whole Foods Market. There are no antibiotics in their meat department ever, so carve up turkey and spiral cut ham with peace of mind. Shop organic sides like stuffing mix and cranberry sauce from three sixty five brand, and all their delectable pies are made with no high fructose corn syrup. Gourmet Thanksgiving flavors with the quality you want only at Whole Foods Market. [00:04:20] S6: This message comes from Ethos. It's easy to put off getting life insurance until something unexpected happens. That makes you realize your family needs you covered. Ethos makes it easy. It's a 100% online. No medical exam, just a few health questions. Apply in minutes and get same day coverage up to 3,000,000. Get your free quote today at ethos dot com slash money. That's ethos.com/money. Application times and rates may vary. [00:04:48] S0: This message comes from Integrative Therapeutics, makers of Cortisol Manager, named best overall ashwagandha supplement by Vogue. Use code stress twenty twenty six for 20% off of Cortisol Manager on amazon.com. [00:05:02] S5: Jacob, you brought these scraggly little candles in the office. I'm holding them up here. They look they look a little marled. [00:05:12] S1: They're definitely not straight, and they're not, like, sleek.
00:05:12 · Jacob Goldstein, David Kestenbaum, Jane Brox
[00:05:12] S1: They're definitely not straight, and they're not, like, sleek. [00:05:15] S5: No. It looks like some mold has grown on a On a string. On a string. Yeah. So you brought these candles into the office here, and we wanted to show them to an expert. And we sat down with this woman, Jane Brox. Jane wrote a book called Brilliant, The Evolution of Artificial Light. [00:05:31] S1: So I made a few different candles. I tried... Oh, look. They're beautiful. I tried them beautiful. You've been a total disaster. [00:05:41] S2: In the in the olden days. If a a mother was trying to teach her daughter to make candles, she would not be pleased with these candles, but we'll see what happens. [00:05:52] S5: I was afraid when we lit these things that we might set off the fire alarm or the sprinkler system in the office. I mean, that is how weird it is to have light from fire these days. [00:06:01] S1: I was afraid we weren't gonna be able to light them at all. I mean, it's just beef fat and twine, but we pulled out a lighter. [00:06:09] S2: Oh, we have we have light. That's not too bad. Should we see how long it lasts? [00:06:17] S5: It's not pretty, but I'm very impressed. [00:06:19] S2: It's it's a beautiful color. Look at the nice yellow flame, wouldn't you say? [00:06:24] S5: Dude, you made a candle. [00:06:26] S1: Jane says that the quest for this, for something that gives you light after the sun goes down, drove people to do all kinds of things.
00:06:26 · Jacob Goldstein, David Kestenbaum, Jane Brox
[00:06:26] S1: Jane says that the quest for this, for something that gives you light after the sun goes down, drove people to do all kinds of things. [00:06:33] S5: In The United States, in the Pacific Northwest, Native Americans used dried salmon. They basically made a salmon candle. In the tropics, people would catch fireflies and try to make a kind of firefly lantern. And then there's this bird called the petrel. [00:06:48] S2: The storm petrel in the North Of Scotland where they would just, which is a very oily seabird, which they'd catch and dry and thread a wick down its throat and then light it and then that was a lamp. [00:07:03] S5: Just carry around a dead bird? [00:07:05] S2: Well, would be on a table. And I would imagine they'd have a little storage area with a lot of dead storm petrols. Martha, we need another petrol. The petrol supply is getting low. [00:07:22] S1: These ways of making light were all a huge hassle. They took a lot of work. It was not just that I didn't know what I was doing when I made those candles. The writer Harriet Beecher Stowe said making candles from animal fat was seven times as bad as washing clothes.