Hey there, it's Stephen Dubner with a bonus episode of Freakonomics Radio.

Our most recent regular episode was an interview with John Sullivan, a former U.S. ambassador to Russia.

We didn't really talk about the Cold War, but as a result of that conversation, I've been thinking a lot about the Cold War.

And that got me thinking about an episode we made some years ago called How the Supermarket

Helped America Win the Cold War.

So I went back and listened to it.

I really liked it, if I do say so myself.

And I thought you might like to hear it again, too.

So here it is.

We have updated facts and figures as necessary.

As always, thanks for listening.

When you think about propaganda campaigns,

I am guessing you don't think of this.

Shop your Safeway store, you will always save more.

At the side of the S, do do do do do at Safeway

After World War I and World War II

came the Cold War between the U.S. and the USSR.

It featured a space race, an arms race, and a farms race. Things like chicken breeding

and hybrid corn took a outsized and somewhat surprising role in U.S. propaganda in the early

1950s. The farms race had an obvious winner. We clearly won the abundance war. But the American victory was, to some

degree, a Puric victory, whose after-effects are still being felt. Economists who don't do

U.S. agricultural policy are horrified by what they see in terms of distorting markets.

...