The lightbulb conspiracy is both real and everywhere

Over the next few episodes, we present Hidden Histories: stories that will make you rethink how the world works. First up, the conspiracy behind the lightbulb—and how it came to shape the entire consumer economy. If you ever wondered why your tech outdates so quickly or just plain fails, you can thank the lightbulb. (This episode originally aired in 2019.) Guests: Sally Helm, former NPR Planet Money correspondent Markus Krajewski, author of The Great Lightbulb Conspiracy Giles Slade, author of Made to Break: Technology and Obsolescence in America Support shows like Throughline with NPR+. Sign up today atplus.npr.org http://plus.npr.org. See pcm.adswizz.com https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

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  Hey there, it's Run. I wanted to share something real quick before we get to the show. It's a comment that an NPR supporter made recently. Elizabeth in Wisconsin says that she gives because, quote, "Throughline is a wonderful program that helps us learn the truth." Elizabeth, we appreciate you. And listeners like Elizabeth and like you are the public we serve. And it's the public that powers everything we do, not shareholders, not special interests, you. Congress voted to eliminate all federal funding for public media one year ago. We hope you can support us and help keep us going. If you're already an NPR Plus supporter, thank you. If not, there's still time to join.

• 1:01Speaker 01

  Head to plus.npr.org. OK, now on to the show.

• 1:09Speaker 01

  This summer break, we wanted to bring you a collection of hidden histories that will make you rethink how the world works, starting with this episode.

• 1:19Speaker 01

  If you ever wondered why your tech outdates so fast or just plain fails, keep listening to find out.

• 1:31Speaker 01

  All right, y'all. All right. Let's do it. Let's just do it.

• 1:34Speaker 02

  Sally.

• 1:35Speaker 01

  Hey, Sally.

• 1:36Speaker 02

  Hi.

• 1:36Speaker 01

  Hey, guys. Welcome to the studio. Thank you so much for having me. I took a long walk around the corner, around the corner from the Planet Money section of the office over to the Throughline part.

• 1:47Speaker 02

  What brings you here?

• 1:48Speaker 01

  Well, I think I have a story for you.

• 1:52Speaker 01

  So I've been looking into the history of planned obsolescence. Do you guys know what this is?

• 1:58Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:59Speaker 02

  Yeah. I know planned obsolescence.

• 2:01Speaker 01

  It's like, it's like the idea that companies might be deliberately breaking products in order to get us to buy more.

• 2:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, I had the old washer dryer combo. It broke the day after the warranty ended. I'm not kidding. It just broke, water went everywhere. And like, we were left with nothing. We couldn't do anything about it. The worst.

• 2:21Speaker 01

  So when that kind of thing happens, that is when people start tossing around this phrase, planned obsolescence. And I wanted to look back and see what the history of this idea is. I found two stories. One happens in the shadows and the other happens right before our eyes. And these two stories helped me understand a force that, I think it is not an exaggeration to say, shapes the entire consumer economy. So do you want to hear it?

• 2:55Speaker 02

  Bring it on.

• 2:57Speaker 01

  All right, coming up after the break.

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• 4:43Speaker 01

  OK, I'm going to start this story in the 1990s in Germany with a small group of, I would call them book nerds. And they were nerds about one book in particular.

• 4:55Speaker 11

  Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon.

• 4:58Speaker 12

  Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow.

• 5:00Speaker 11

  A demanding novel of comic terrifying incidents that traces the odyssey of the anti-hero, an American lieutenant stationed in London during World War II. Strong language and explicit descriptions of sex.

• 5:13Speaker 01

  Do you guys know this book? I don't. It's sort of like one of those cult classic books. It's like 700 pages long, very dense, paranoid, has like, you know, technical details about rocket science kind of thing. It's that kind of book.

• 5:25Speaker 12

  Gravity's Rainbow was something like the Bible of our circle of friends. So we're really delving into the history of that novel and were absolutely fascinated by the fiction.

• 5:37Speaker 01

  That's Marcus Krajewski. He and two of his friends were obsessed with this one book in particular because they were all sort of technically minded people. One of them studied the machine gun. Marcus had studied the Dewey Decimal System. So, you know, machines, systems, conspiracy theories, the same sort of thing that Pynchon was writing about. So this book was great fuel for-

• 6:02Speaker 12

  Intense discussions, drinking tea together, smoking dope together, trips to the countryside together, spending the whole weekend talking about light bulbs within beautiful nature.

• 6:14Speaker 01

  They would spend the whole weekend talking about light bulbs. Correct. Light bulbs, yes. So there was this one story within the story of Gravity's Rainbow that they were really intrigued by.

• 6:28Speaker 12

  A small history of an eternal light bulb. It's called Byron the bulb.

• 6:33Speaker 02

  An eternal light bulb.

• 6:34Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 6:35Speaker 12

  An eternal light bulb which would never fade out. It's perfectly built, so it cannot just die. It's eternal.

• 6:42Speaker 01

  In the book, Byron the bulb is conscious and he knows that he is going to live forever. But he also knows that there is a group of people out there who are trying to get him. It is a group of light bulb manufacturers called Phoebus who know that, obviously, if light bulbs can live forever, then light bulb manufacturers will be out of business. So Phoebus learns about Byron and tries to destroy him. OK, clearly fiction. Well-

• 7:14Speaker 12

  Once you're familiar with Pynchon, you know that it's not only fiction, but it's very much based on facts. So the history of the eternal light bulb sounds like pure fantasy. But if you dig a little bit into history, it turns out that Pynchon had sources.

• 7:34Speaker 01

  So that is what they talked about all weekend. Which parts of this totally far-fetched seeming story might actually be true? And they started to ask themselves this question. Could there be a light bulb that could live forever?

• 7:50Speaker 02

  I'm going to say no.

• 7:51Speaker 01

  Really? Because recall that this is a podcast and I am forced to reveal at this moment that in fact, there is a light bulb that lives forever. At least, I mean, almost forever, forever-ish. It's been burning since 1901. And I went out to Livermore, California to meet it, see the bulb.

• 8:14Speaker 01

  That's it up there.

• 8:15Speaker 02

  That's it. Can you see a light? Yeah, it's just a light bulb, right?

• 8:18Speaker 01

  Wait, you flew across the country to look at a light bulb? I flew across the country to see a light bulb, to interview a light bulb. Actually, I was interviewing a person. I talked to Tom Bramall. He's a retired deputy fire chief. The bulb hangs in the Livermore Fire Station.

• 8:34Speaker 02

  This is a hand-blown bulb. And when it was manufactured, it was a secret formula that they used on the carbon filament.

• 8:41Speaker 01

  Ooh, a secret formula.

• 8:43Speaker 02

  Which is still secret today.

• 8:45Speaker 01

  Remember, this bulb has been burning continuously. So obviously, no one has broken it open to figure out what exactly is going on. We do know that there is carbon involved.

• 8:56Speaker 02

  The carbon filament was so hard. They said it would reach the density of a diamond. What kind of magical light bulb lasts for more than 100 years?

• 9:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm kind of hung up on the fact that this bulb has lasted for so long. And I literally have a light bulb in my bathroom that we put in six months ago when we moved in, and it died.

• 9:16Speaker 02

  So how do we go from the eternal light bulb to Run's dead light bulb?

• 9:22Speaker 01

  I mean, it's kind of a story about the whole light bulb business, actually. So, OK, in 1879, Thomas Edison introduces what is the first commercially viable light bulb. And by 1901, when this long-lasting bulb first turns on, the light bulb market is booming. Companies are innovating and there are lots of little light bulb manufacturers all trying to make the best light bulb that they can. So that's kind of like the first link in the Pynchon story because there was this period where companies were making very durable light bulbs, à la Byron the Everlasting Bulb. So that is step one.

• 10:04Speaker 01

  Now, Marcus goes looking for the next link in the story. He wants to find Phoebus. The people out to get Byron. Exactly. So he sees the name Phoebus come up in a few places, like it's in this one book. But then one of Marcus's friends has an idea. Why don't you check out the archives of Osrem, which was the biggest light bulb manufacturer in Germany? And there was a huge trove of documents right there in Berlin.

• 10:36Speaker 01

  So Marcus goes searching.

• 10:39Speaker 12

  In the German archive system, you can see who was reading the files before you. And you discover that nobody has touched these files for decades. You're the first. You're sifting through those original documents, which is thrilling.

• 10:55Speaker 01

  And in document after document, there it is. The Phoebus cartel.

• 11:02Speaker 12

  A cartel named Phoebus.

• 11:04Speaker 01

  The Phoebus cartel. Yes. Do you guys remember how there were all those little light bulb companies competing to make long lasting bulbs? Yeah. Well, by the 1920s, things have changed. The market has gotten really consolidated. And there are a bunch of big light bulb companies that are basically controlling things.

• 11:24Speaker 12

  Compagnie des Lampes was governing the whole market in France. In Hungary, it was Tungsmam. General Electric had a branch for the UK. Osram was in Germany. And that, of course, is more or less paradise for an industry. If you have no competitors at all, you can do everything with the consumers because they totally depend on you.

• 11:47Speaker 01

  Imagine it's the early 1920s. You're looking at a map of the world. You could go through and write the name of a light bulb monopolist on the countries that they control. They all have their territory, which is great for them. But things aren't perfect. In fact, 1923, at least in particular for that German company, Osram, it's a pretty bad year for sales. And the head of Osram is this guy named William Meinhardt. He decides that he's going to get the whole crew together, all the monopolists in all the different countries.

• 12:24Speaker 12

  In order to rule the whole world of the production of light bulbs.

• 12:34Speaker 01

  It's late December, 1924, a couple of days before Christmas in Geneva, Switzerland. I assume it's snowy. It's Christmas. We can imagine candles flickering in the windows. They meet in secret. It's a short meeting because they've sort of already been chatting about this plan already. And by the time they meet, they're decided.

• 12:53Speaker 12

  I can quote that if I would only be able to find it. Zum Zwecke eines engeren Zusammenarbeitens insbesondere zur Vermeidung. So for the purpose of a stronger cooperation is actually in order to avoid a conflict because of competition and in order to increase sales.

• 13:14Speaker 01

  They are forming a cartel, a secret group to control the market. The Phoebus cartel. Why did they call it the Phoebus cartel? So the name Phoebus comes from the Greek god of light, also known as Apollo. Clearly saw themselves very highly. Exactly. You know, as these gods of light, they divide up the whole electrified world. And the plan really boils down to this one essential restriction that they put in place.

• 13:48Speaker 12

  They agreed on exactly 1,000 hours. We intentionally have to reduce the quality of the lamps in order to increase sales.

• 13:58Speaker 01

  These light bulb companies, as part of their mission to sell more light bulbs, have conspired to make their products worse, to break the light bulb so that you have to buy more. Wait, what?

• 14:10Speaker 02

  They all pledge to do this?

• 14:13Speaker 01

  Yeah. They decide we are going to reduce the lifespan of the light bulb from where it was hovering, which was around 2,000 hours. They decide we're going to get it down to 1,000 hours. How do you even do that? Well, they're experimenting with different materials. They're like changing the size of the filament. I mean, you have to imagine that for a long time, the engineers at these companies were trying to make light bulbs better. And what Marcus sees in some of these documents is engineers comparing notes, like going against all their training and now trying to make the product worse. It actually took a few years after the agreement was signed

• 14:56Speaker 01

  before they were even technologically able to make the light bulb as bad as they wanted it to be.

• 15:02Speaker 02

  So they've figured out how to make the light bulb fail?

• 15:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, totally. They break the light bulb. Also, obviously, like, it's hard to sort of get everyone around the world to do this.

• 15:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:14Speaker 01

  Because, I mean, if you think about it, so in a cartel, in any cartel, you cheat. That might be good for you and bad for everyone else in the cartel, right? Like, if one person makes a better light bulb, they could sort of take over. And the Phoebus cartel knows this. So they set up a system that basically ensures that people are following the rules. They have light bulb testing rooms.

• 15:36Speaker 12

  Like in a library, bookshelves, but rather books. You have plugins for light bulbs.

• 15:43Speaker 01

  I've seen a picture of this. It's kind of magical looking. There's a guy in like a lab coat looking thing standing in front of these glowing rows.

• 15:52Speaker 12

  And all the light bulbs are numbered and they are burning.

• 15:55Speaker 01

  And the cartel has fines.

• 15:58Speaker 12

  For the fiscal year 1929, they have penalties with 304,000 Swiss francs, which is quite a lot considering the late 1920s.

• 16:12Speaker 01

  I actually saw a graph of the lifespan of light bulbs around the world during this period. And the lifespan just goes down and down and down and down. Phoebus's plan is working.

• 16:27Speaker 02

  So they were able to get down to 1,000 hours and reach those goals. Did that translate into more profits, more revenue?

• 16:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, sales were going up. They were selling more light bulbs. And the cooperation, like, it's kind of impressive. Yeah, that's the thing. I'm very surprised by it. Sinister, but impressive.

• 16:45Speaker 02

  I'm wondering, though, was there any upside for consumers?

• 16:49Speaker 01

  Well, I thought this was really interesting. Marcus says Phoebus helped move us towards a more unified system. He told me the reason that there is one kind of incandescent light bulb thread that screws into one kind of socket, that that is partly because of Phoebus, because they did this big coordination and it ended up coordinating that aspect, too. So like, what ended up happening with Phoebus cartel? A few things happened. So first of all, General Electric, the big American light bulb company, they were involved in the Phoebus cartel in sort of a sideways way through their international subsidiaries. But they get into some legal trouble in the United States for alleged anti-competitive practices.

• 17:32Speaker 01

  And there's a judgment against them in 1953. In that court opinion, a bunch of information about Phoebus actually comes out. There's no way to know for sure, but this might be where Thomas Pynchon got his inspiration. But the real sort of death knell for the cartel was World War II. And it's for sort of obvious reasons. Global cooperation among these powers was impossible because they were at war with each other. But I should make clear that for years, they did succeed at this whole bland obsolescence thing. They made their product worse in order to make more money. So are we at the end? Well, that is the end of this story. But as I mentioned, there are two.

• 18:14Speaker 01

  I came across another story from this same general time period where obsolescence changes shape and takes on an even more insidious form.

• 18:28Speaker 01

  After the break, the dark art of a different obsolescence.

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• 19:59Speaker 02

  OK, Sally, so you have another obsolescence story for us?

• 20:03Speaker 01

  Yes, I do. This one takes place right out in the open. And it changed my whole sense of who the villain is behind plant obsolescence. The story starts around the same time that the lightbulb story does, at the turn of the 20th century. Lightbulbs are getting more popular in the US, and so are automobiles. One automobile in particular.

• 20:30Speaker 15

  If you went to buy a car in the United States, you'd find a lot full of black Model Ts that all look almost exactly the same. Henry Ford said you could have it in any color, as long as it's black.

• 20:42Speaker 01

  This is Giles Slade. He's the author of "Made to Break: Technology and Obsolescence in America."

• 20:47Speaker 02

  OK, so it's not the most glamorous ride. But what do you get when you buy Henry Ford's Model T?

• 20:54Speaker 01

  I mean, you can think of it as basically like a replacement for your horse.

• 20:58Speaker 15

  So the driving experience is really like driving a tractor through a field. These machines are very popular, but they're sort of like farm machinery. They're not very luxurious.

• 21:10Speaker 01

  And like tractors, the way Model Ts were made and marketed, they were geared towards men. Yeah, not surprising. Oh, the men. They're everywhere.

• 21:21Speaker 02

  Ah, here we go. Here we go.

• 21:25Speaker 01

  So Henry Ford is just the start of this story. There's another man that I would like to introduce you to. His name is Alfred P. Sloan.

• 21:34Speaker 02

  This is the Sloan Foundation guy, right? The NPR founder?

• 21:37Speaker 01

  I mean, yes, so you've heard him because of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Same guy, and full disclosure, that foundation is one of Planet Money's financial supporters. OK, so Sloan. Like Henry Ford, Sloan is an electrical engineer. He graduates from MIT in 1895, and he becomes this serious, single-minded businessman. One journalist who wrote about him made this list of his character traits, including works every hour, has no hobbies, never reads, never drinks, never tells stories.

• 22:08Speaker 15

  Sounds like run.

• 22:11Speaker 01

  Why? You want to take this outside, Rattene?

• 22:15Speaker 02

  No, no.

• 22:16Speaker 01

  Do not, don't take it outside. Sloan, Sloan is a business genius, so, you know, I don't know. Maybe that's like run, too. Thank you, Sally. You're so welcome. So in one of his first jobs, Sloan basically saves a failing company. And by 1918, he has caught the eye of General Motors. GM is maybe not failing, but struggling. Because the car business is tough in the 1920s. Henry Ford has already sold a car to like many of the people who would want to buy one. So why would they buy a car from General Motors? Sloan had some ideas. First up, he introduced different makes and models.

• 22:58Speaker 15

  A luxury line, a kind of premium line, a sort of middle-class line, four-door sedans for families, and then an economy line, the very cheap, you know, 19 to 23 Chevy.

• 23:09Speaker 16

  All America is waiting and watching for the new Chevrolet. Have you heard anything about the new Chevrolet? Wonder what the new Chevrolet is going to be like?

• 23:18Speaker 01

  And I heard the new ones are going to be even more comfortable. This is a total innovation for cars. This has not been done before. And then Sloan starts looking at the data on who is buying things. Not necessarily cars, just things.

• 23:32Speaker 15

  Marketing and advertising firms began the first real demographic research in the teens. And what they discovered around 1920 was that women were actually spending the family money, making 85% of all purchases.

• 23:46Speaker 01

  But remember, the Model T was plain, simple, and made for men. So Sloan realized.

• 23:54Speaker 15

  He could sell more by doing a lot of things that Henry Ford would never think of doing, like making it a much more comfortable experience to start and ride in a car, and also making it a much more aesthetics experience by, you know, having different colored cars.

• 24:11Speaker 01

  This last thing, colors, was huge. Because before this, cars were covered in a lacquer that just like did not hold colors all that well. Like it would sometimes like fade to yellow. It was just not really working. So black was the most practical, the most permanent. But in the 1920s, this company, DuPont, which was an investor in GM, they spent a fortune trying to create durable colored paint. And in 1923, they succeeded. In the next few years, as Sloan rolled out new models aimed at women, they were all different colors. Side note, this same paint breakthrough actually also leads to nail polish as we know it. Nail polish and car paint were the same thing.

• 24:54Speaker 01

  I know, I found this so funny, but yes, the same. You can match in everything. Right, exactly, if you want. This color thing, I mean, this is Sloan's big gambit. He is wondering, can I sell the same basic machine just in a radically different package?

• 25:11Speaker 10

  We make the superficial things the key thing to the purchase. So the fins on the back, a better radio, new upholstery, all the sort of accessories, the kind of what would have been considered frivolous things, they become essential. Sloan said, "We want the consumer to buy a new car every year."

• 25:32Speaker 01

  That's Jacque Peretti, author of the book, "The Deals That Made the World." Over time, GM tries out different looks. They lower the car's body. They elongate the hood. It has crazy curves. They don't really change the engine, but eventually you can get the car in blue or red or green. After the break. Yellow. Or orange. Alfred Sloan gets into our heads. Or maroon. And stays there. Or gray. Or beige. Or white. Or pink. Or silver.

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• 27:30Speaker 01

  OK, so at this point, Sloan is busy making cars sexy.

• 27:34Speaker 02

  But they weren't like breaking the car. This wasn't a Phoebus situation, right?

• 27:38Speaker 01

  No, no, no, no, the cars work. It's just that they were.

• 27:41Speaker 15

  Obsolescent psychologically. Obsolescent in the sense of fashion. So it would seem radically out of date by year three, given all the new models.

• 27:56Speaker 15

  And so by 1927, Henry Ford was forced to stop production of his Model Ts and revamp his entire manufacturing process and come up with another model that would then compete with the General Motors products. And so he came up with a new Ford called the Model A. That only worked for so long, and eventually he was forced to bring out different lines and different colors and basically copy GM, who'd won the consumer war.

• 28:24Speaker 16

  To tell the waiting public of the car we have ready for them, Chevrolet must have a new advertising theme. A theme that is militant, a theme that will impel people to act. A theme that will make owners proud to say, I bought one.

• 28:41Speaker 01

  Sloan had won the consumer war by ushering in a whole new style of warfare. This psychological obsolescence, which made the consumer want to buy something new, even if they didn't necessarily need it. Sloan was actually one of the first big businessmen to use the word consumer. And he realized.

• 29:04Speaker 10

  Consumers want things, but perhaps they don't want things quickly enough. We could make them want something, the newest new thing, a little faster. They shifted the idea of obsolescence from something done to an object to something we ourselves would choose, but we want the newest thing. That was key.

• 29:22Speaker 01

  That's Jacque Peretti again. And he says Sloan was like this psychological master. He was figuring out all these new ways to really get inside our heads.

• 29:34Speaker 10

  And so when you bought the Chevrolet Bel Air, it came with a catalog for the new one that was going to be coming out next Christmas. So at the very moment of purchase, they've built in a chip, you know, inside your head that says, actually, this isn't going to be very good because you're going to want this newer one that's even better. And so there's a kind of built in disappointment with the moment of purchase.

• 29:58Speaker 15

  I think psychological obsolescence fashion depends on disappointment.

• 30:03Speaker 10

  And that was intentional. And that was what Sloan's genius was about.

• 30:07Speaker 01

  Giles Slade says that the last part of the psychology in psychological obsolescence has to do with something that marketers and advertising writers began doing in the 1920s. Selling products based on pride and shame.

• 30:24Speaker 19

  I mean, I get that. Like, a new car was something you could be proud of. You'd want to drive down the street in it. And an old, beat up one was something that, you know, you might be a little bit ashamed of.

• 30:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's exactly it. And Sloan takes these new ideas from advertising and builds those psychological triggers into the products themselves. He makes each new car more desirable than the last.

• 30:50Speaker 10

  And this is what you see with the iPhone today.

• 30:53Speaker 01

  The iPhone. We have arrived at the iPhone. So, OK, Rund Ramtin, when I tell someone that I'm doing a story about planned obsolescence, they almost always say, oh, a story about the iPhone. So let's talk about it.

• 31:06Speaker 02

  The battery thing.

• 31:07Speaker 01

  The battery thing. So, OK, maybe you heard about this. There's sort of this conspiracy theory, this controversy. In 2017, iPhone users were noticing that after they had updated their software, their phones started to slow down.

• 31:22Speaker 19

  Mm-hmm.

• 31:23Speaker 01

  Which is frustrating. Like, an update is supposed to make your phone better, and some people felt like it was making the phone worse. So people started yelling at Apple about this. And Apple said, whoa, whoa, no. We're actually doing this for your own good. We're not breaking the phone. We're not trying to shorten its lifespan. But if we slow down some older phones, they don't crash as much.

• 31:43Speaker 19

  Hmm.

• 31:44Speaker 01

  We're sorry we didn't mention it. And Apple offers a cheap battery replacement to sort of sweeten the apology.

• 31:50Speaker 19

  Well, I mean, this kind of sounds like planned obsolescence modern day Phoebus.

• 31:54Speaker 01

  I mean, look, Apple totally denies that they were doing this to drive upgrades. But if you believe that Apple slowed down older phones in order to make people buy an expensive new phone, then yeah, that would be a perfect example of planned obsolescence. And the thing is, we don't really know if that's true. And, you know, I mean, Apple has a reasonable case to make about why they did what they did. However, I think we can say for 100% sure that Apple is a modern master of a different type of obsolescence. Alfred Sloan-style psychological obsolescence.

• 32:29Speaker 00

  And it comes with Apple Intelligence.

• 32:30Speaker 01

  So we designed a new calling system.

• 32:32Speaker 10

  Our fusion camera is a technical marvel. Coming to a pocket near you.

• 32:37Speaker 19

  I have to admit, for a long time, I was a sucker for this. I feel like when we find ourselves wanting these new phones, like, really wanting them, like, feeling like we almost need them, it's really tempting to think there's a sinister plot behind this.

• 32:52Speaker 01

  Totally. I, yeah, like, you know, we imagine that there's someone pulling the strings, right? Like, some mustache twirling person in a back room or something.

• 33:00Speaker 19

  Exactly. And, you know, with Phoebus, it was true. So it's not that far-fetched.

• 33:05Speaker 02

  But with psychological obsolescence, though, it's like what Albert Sloan did. We can't blame that on some shady cartel. We all know that that's happening, right? And there's something inside us that's making us get in the car, drive to the Apple Store, and stand in a long line, what, to get a new phone with facial recognition?

• 33:23Speaker 01

  I mean, right, like, we are cooperating.

• 33:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:26Speaker 01

  Right? But like, this isn't just the iPhone. I mean, this is baked into so many products, so many places in the economy. And, look, GM used to be the biggest company in America. Over the past couple of years, Apple has often been the biggest company in America. Like, psychological obsolescence is not just some cute, clever marketing scheme. And it's not just some trick that's being pulled on us. Like, I think I came into this story thinking of planned obsolescence as basically what Phoebus did. You know, something that companies do to consumers. But the most powerful kind of obsolescence is in our heads.

• 34:08Speaker 01

  We are choosing this ourselves. And I don't think we could stop it if we wanted to.

• 34:24Speaker 01

  That's Sally Helm, formerly of NPR's Planet Money podcast. On our next installment of Hidden History's Monopoly.

• 34:33Speaker 05

  Depending on how you look at it, Monopoly is either the American dream or the American nightmare.

• 34:39Speaker 01

  A game that celebrates owning it all, even though that wasn't its original mission.

• 34:44Speaker 02

  That's it for this week's show. I'm Ramtin Arablouei.

• 34:47Speaker 01

  I'm Rund Abdelfattah. And you've been listening to Throughline from NPR.

• 34:51Speaker 02

  This show was produced by Rund and I.

• 34:54Speaker 01

  Our team includes.

• 34:55Speaker 02

  Jamie York. Jordana Hockman. Lawrence Wu.

• 34:58Speaker 19

  Noor Wazwaz. Yo, yo, yo.

• 35:00Speaker 13

  Michelle Lance. Sima Nei. Nice, smiling summer.

• 35:03Speaker 09

  Nigeria Eaton.

• 35:04Speaker 02

  Planet Money's editor is Brian Erstad.

• 35:07Speaker 01

  Their senior producer is Alex Goldmark.

• 35:09Speaker 02

  And special thanks to Michael Waldman.

• 35:11Speaker 01

  Brian Merchant.

• 35:13Speaker 02

  David Farber.

• 35:14Speaker 01

  And Adi Kamdar.

• 35:15Speaker 02

  Thanks also to Anya Grunman.

• 35:16Speaker 01

  Chris Turpin.

• 35:18Speaker 02

  And Aida Porasad.

• 35:19Speaker 01

  Our music is composed by Drop Electric. Thanks for listening.

• 35:27Speaker 03

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• 35:32Speaker 20

  This week on Sources and Methods, President Trump's diesel deal with Russia. Would it help with shipping costs? And would it even be legal? The United States produces more diesel than it consumes. There's no real need to bring more diesel into this country. Plus, we dig into claims from Ukraine that the US cut access to crucial military satellites. Listen now to Sources and Methods from NPR.