Maureen Ogle spent years tracing how Americans built one of the most productive and destructive food systems on earth. Her book, The Price of Plenty, is a history of meat in America: from colonial abundance to industrial consolidation to the present conundrum of cheap food and its costs. On this episode, Ogle unpacks the political economy of American meat: how the "paradox of plenty" shaped regulation, antitrust failure, and consumer entitlement across two centuries. We get into the infrastructure that made industrial meat all but inevitable, the public investment that served consolidation far more than smallholders, and what the historical record actually says about whether meaningful change is possible. History as diagnosis, not nostalgia. You can learn more about Maureen and her book, here https://maureenogle.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices