In another life, I might have been an accountant or an economist. I write these words fully aware that economics has been called the dismal science, yet I remain an enthusiast.
Understanding why people favor certain choices over others; how aspects of those choices are fundamentally irrational in spite of our belief in our basis for sound decision-making; and how following the numbers can paint a more nuanced picture of our actions make these fields sexy and intellectually rewarding.
Accounting can be an elegant form of parsing the distance between words and actions using numbers, providing metrics that encompass the gulf between ideal and actual behavior.
One of my long-time favorite podcasts, recently highlighted by MotE, is Planet Money. One of the all-time most fascinating series produced by Planet Money recorded their efforts to explain the global economy through the ostensibly simple act of making a t-shirt.
Here is a complete list of each of the five episodes and what they cover. Direct links to each episode are below:
- Episode 496: Farming the cotton for the t-shirt.
- Episode 497: Men’s t-shirts are made in Bangladesh
- Episode 498: Women’s t-shirts are assembled in Colombia.
- Episode 499: How Bangladesh developed a garment industry.
- Episode 500: Shipping the t-shirts back to the USA.
Enjoy!
Plenty of time for a 2nd career in accounting once you’ve hung up the stethoscope! May your debits forever match your credits…
That’s either a quaint traditional accountant folk blessing, or else a curse of omission in that you did not wish that my credits forever exceed my debits.