January 11, 2016· 31 min

Episode 10: How the World Ended Up With a Boring Banana

Dan Koeppel

Orality

Model

68%

Oral-dominant (speeches, podcasts, storytelling)

Speaker Breakdown

HostTracy Alloway(857 words)

M:29%

HostJoe Weisenthal(945 words)

M:29%

GuestDan Koeppel(2,750 words)

M:94%

Oral Indicators

Agonistic50%

literally, completely, very

Engagement45%

you, our, your

Memory Aids100%

listen, now, so

Repetition100%

banana (90x), it's (63x), they (61x)

Parallelism86%

And I'm Joe Weisenthal, managi..., And I'm not talking about oil...., But why are we talking about i...

Sound Patterns54%

32 question(s), alliteration: "markets move", alliteration: "barclays brief"

Formulaic Phrases7%

i mean, so to speak

Literate Indicators

Hedging16%

could, maybe, apparently

Passive Voice11%

been cloned, was invented, were unseeded

Abstract Nouns19%

investment, recommendation, commodity

Subordination7%

because, until, though

Sentence Length30%

Avg: 12.4 words/sentence

Word Complexity49%

investment, analyze, anticipate

Academic Markers0%

Impersonal Style55%

267 personal pronouns found

Descriptive Style83%

literally, completely, really

Description

This week, we're taking on one of the most fragile commodities markets around. No, it's not oil (though we do get to that later in the program), it's the market for bananas. Dangerously reliant on a single, boring breed of the tropical fruit, banana growers now face a rampant disease that threatens one of the world's biggest food supplies. We talk to Dan Koeppel, author of "Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World," about the development of a monoculture-based banana market and the pitfalls of having a single breed monopolizing the local supermarket. Speaking of monopolies, we then take a swift detour from the banana republics of yesteryear to visit the oil-drenched Middle East of today, where Saudi Arabia is considering an initial public offering of its massive state-owned oil company See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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