Catherine Raynes: How the World Ran Out of Everything, 17 Years Later

How the World Ran Out of Everything by Peter S. Goodman  

How does the wealthiest country on earth run out of protective gear in the middle of a public health catastrophe? How do its parents find themselves unable to locate crucially needed infant formula? How do its largest companies spend billions of dollars making cars that no one can drive for a lack of chips? 

The last few years have radically highlighted the intricacy and fragility of the global supply chain. Enormous ships were stuck at sea, warehouses overflowed, and delivery trucks stalled. The result was a scarcity of everything from breakfast cereal to medical devices, from frivolous goods to lifesaving necessities. And while the scale of the pandemic shock was unprecedented, it underscored the troubling reality that the system was fundamentally at risk of descending into chaos all along. And it still is. Sabotaged by financial interests, loss of transparency in markets, and worsening working conditions for the people tasked with keeping the gears turning, our global supply chain has become perpetually on the brink of collapse. 

In How the World Ran Out of Everything, award-winning journalist Peter S. Goodman reveals the fascinating innerworkings of our supply chain and the factors that have led to its constant, dangerous vulnerability. His reporting takes readers deep into the elaborate system, showcasing the triumphs and struggles of the human players who operate it—from factories in Asia and an almond grower in Northern California, to a group of striking railroad workers in Texas, to a truck driver who Goodman accompanies across hundreds of miles of the Great Plains. Through their stories, Goodman weaves a powerful argument for reforming a supply chain to become truly reliable and resilient, demanding a radical redrawing of the bargain between labor and shareholders, and deeper attention paid to how we get the things we need. 

From one of the most respected economic journalists working today, How the World Ran Out of Everything is a fiercely smart, deeply informative look at how our supply chain operates, and why its reform is crucial—not only to avoid dysfunction in our day to day lives, but to protect the fate of our global fortunes. 

  

17 Years Later by JP Pomare  

Who killed the wealthy primrose family? The violent slaughter of the Primrose family while they slept shocked the nation. Their young live-in chef, Bill Kareama, was swiftly charged with murder and brought to justice. But the brutal crime scarred the idyllic town of Cambridge forever. Seventeen years later, true-crime podcaster Sloane Abbott tracks down prison psychologist TK Phillips. Once a fierce campaigner for an appeal, TK now lives a quiet life with Bill's case firmly in his past. As Sloane lures a reluctant TK back into the fight, evidence emerges that casts new light on the Primroses - and who might have wanted them dead. While the list of suspects grows, Bill's innocence is still far from assured. What will it cost Sloane and TK to uncover the truth? 

 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
You're listening to this Saturday Morning with Jack Team podcast
from News Talks at Me.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Catherine Rains joins me now to talk books. Good morning,
Good morning, how are you. I'm really good. Thank you.
I love the title of this first book we're going
to talk about, because it sounds like a great piece
of fiction, but of course it's nonfiction. It actually happened,
How the World Ran Out of Everything by Peter S. Goodman.

Speaker 3 (00:32):
So he's talking in this about the global supply chain,
and the premise of the book is that we live
in this time of almost instantaneous purchasing, where you can
get anything at the click of a screen and delivered
to our doorstep, and we don't really give it a
second thought. And so he looks at the inner workings
of the supply chain and the factors that lead to
its vulnerability. And so he takes us at a deep

(00:55):
inside that and the humans behind it, and the factories
in Asia, and he talks to an armand grower in
North California, and some railway workers in Texas and a
truck driver that he actually needs across hundreds of miles
of the Great Pains, and he has this very powerful argument.
I think for reforming the supply chain to become resilient.

(01:15):
And he nobody, none of us really paid particularly much
attention to labor and shareholders in the supply chain until
March twenty twenty when the world's shut down. And this
book specifically really looks at America and for the first
time facing bear shelves and modern history, and you know
this seemingly endless cycle of shortages. You know, first it

(01:36):
was toilet paper, and then it was flour, and people
were trying to build their new at home lives, and
you just got faced with non stock and bear shelves,
and some of those shortages, he argues, could have been
prevented if there was good inventry levels in America, and
some of them were just lies, and it was you know,
if things are in short supply, the price goes up,
and so the supply chain break almost looks like it's

(01:58):
come and gone. But the impact on the sly chain
in the economy with things like inflation, and what he
does is he follows the story of this single forty
foot shipping container and it's a journey across the world
in twenty twenty one, and he talks to the people
involved and what happens and the fact that it takes
almost a year, and this whole disruption and the factory
in China, and it's fascinating because you don't really give

(02:20):
much thought to this and the unseen labor that brings
things to your door. No, I have a s that
we're asking a lot of people.

Speaker 2 (02:26):
Yeah, I have a strange fascination with shipping. I mean,
it's just it's such an incredibly old industry and I
just love the logistics of how we move things around
the world and how that seems to work. So does
it go into sort of the shipping and what happened
on that side of things as well?

Speaker 3 (02:43):
Yes, he does, because as you're following that about of
COVID then and then the and you know other things,
and he calls it the great supply chain disruption, and yes,
and those bottlenecks at every step in the way, so
not just the factories, but the ships and fast getting
stuck at ports and all sorts of things. As he
follows those stories and different workers and different people, it's
really interesting.

Speaker 2 (03:03):
Is JP Pomaro becoming one of our most prolifical.

Speaker 3 (03:07):
I think so, because seventeen years later is his seventh
foot and this one centers the narrative around a true
chi crime podcast called Legacy, And It's happened that a
murder happened of a very English family called the Primrose
Family seventeen years ago in the very quiet little town
of Cambridge in New Zealand, and the family chef was

(03:28):
arrested a few hours later and has been in prison
ever since. And this podcaster, a woman called Sloan Abbot,
is looking into the story, believing that Bill Caramero, the
chef that was arrested, was not given a fair trial,
and as she's prompted to take on this case, she
focuses on the accusation and trial is a potential miscarriage
of justice. But when she starts investigating, she finds that

(03:51):
everybody involved in the story in the case believes that
Bell committed the crime, including a psychologist a guy called
jenru Phillips TK, who was very close to Bill until
he became completely convinced that Bill did it. And Abbot
discovers this new piece of evidt and the case begins
to reopen and TK is drawn back in and you
get Bill's accounts of the events that lead up to

(04:12):
the killing starting with his return from Australia and being
hired as a live and cook for the Primroses. And
you flip back and forth and time in different perspectives
in the Suspects, and there's lots of red hearings in
this and it's a book that's rich with our own
culture and history, and there's themes of colonization and racism
and the ways of which Bill and the other married
characters were treated by the Primroses. And the book starts

(04:35):
off really slowly, but you get this absolutely roller coaster
of story and lots of suspense, and you're completely hooked
as the events of seventeen years ago are revealed. And
I thought that I kept picking who was who was
the person, and every time.

Speaker 2 (04:53):
I was like not, then I love a book. The
KENSI guessing seventh book is J. P. Permire's style changing
at all.

Speaker 3 (05:02):
A little, But I think that he's so good at
sort of hoking you into a story that has changes
over time. Yeah, he's still deep in sort of the
thriller kind of crime side of things. And I think
I think the style of writing's changing. I think it's
becoming more engrossing and better. I think of anything he's
just becoming a better author.

Speaker 1 (05:20):
And the stories.

Speaker 3 (05:21):
Are great, and lots of them have been optioned for
movies or TV series, and you know, they lend themselves,
and this one in particular lends itself very well to
that style of story.

Speaker 2 (05:32):
Thanks so much, Katherine. Those books that Catherine spoke about
were How the World Ran Out of Everything by Peter S.
Goodman and seventeen years later by JP Pomarte. It is
a fifteen to twelve newstalks EDB.

Speaker 1 (05:44):
For more from Saturday Morning with Jack Tame. Listen live
to News talks 'B from nine am Saturday, or follow
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