
Containers is an 8-part audio documentary about how global trade has transformed the economy and ourselves. Host and correspondent Alexis Madrigal leads you through the world of ships and sailors, technology and tugboats, warehouses and cranes. At a time when Donald Trump is threatening to toss out the global economic order, Containers provides an illuminating, deep, and weird look at how capitali... more
| Publishes | Weekly | Episodes | 9 | Founded | 9 years ago |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Category | Technology | ||||

In the conclusion of this series, we peer into the future of human-robot combinations on the waterfront and in the rest of the supply chain. We’ll hear about the strange future of cyborg trucking and meet the friendly little helper bots in warehouses... more
It’s 1979 and containerization is sweeping through the San Francisco waterfront, leaving the old docks in ruins. As global trade explodes, a group of longshoremen band together to try to preserve the culture of work that they knew. They take pictures... more
It started with a puzzle: why were people in West Oakland dying 12-15
years earlier than their counterparts in the wealthier hills? The
people in the flatlands were dying of the same things as the people in
the hills, just much younger. Meet the d... more
American companies pioneered container shipping, but now the ocean freight business is dominated by foreign firms. Thanks to the Jones Act, a 1920 law, all cargo between American ports must be carried on American-made ships, so we do still have a fle... more
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Madrigal does a great job of putting together vignettes on subjects which are interesting in their own right, all related by the otherwise nondescript, identical seeming containers which underlie our modern lives. I came to this podcast series late, inspired by his just released book Pacific Circuit. The one knock I can mention: the audio engineering is terrible. Something went wrong at the QC stage in release.
The latest reciprocal tariffs that the Trump administration has placed on china and others makes this series relevant in 2025. I listened to the series one time back in 2018 and again in April 2025. Still super interesting.
Made it through episode three which was about coffee ands its tangential role in global shipping. Superficial and super boring factoids throughout. May be of interest to middle schoolers.
This series is one of my all-time faves, and I hope they’re working on a follow up or sequel examining peri- and post-Covid supply chains, or how drones, autonomous vehicles, and other technologies might (or might not) change shipping.
Really enjoyed this. Chock grill of great insights.










Listeners, social reach, demographics and more for this podcast.
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Containers launched 9 years ago and published 9 episodes to date. You can find more information about this podcast including rankings, audience demographics and engagement in our podcast database.
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