298- Fordlandia

99% Invisible

• Episode: 298- Fordlandia
• Website: 99% Invisible
• Feed URL: http://feeds.99percentinvisible.org/99percentinvisible
• Duration: 00:30:12
• Published: 2018-03-07 02:13

In the late 1920s, the Ford Motor Company bought up millions of acres of land in Brazil. They loaded boats with machinery and supplies, and shipped them deep into the Amazon rainforest. Workers cut down trees and cleared the land and then they built a rubber plantation in the middle of one of the wildest places on earth. But Henry Ford wanted this community -- called “Fordlândia” -- to be more than just a huge plantation. He envisioned an industrial utopia. He paid his Brazilian workers good wages, at least for the region. And he tried to build them the kind of place he would’ve loved to live, which is to say: a small Midwestern town...but in the middle of the jungle.

Fordlandia

In the second segment, we discuss Roman’s other show What Trump Can Teach Us About Con Law