Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi

I think it comes back to, you know, we really care about the soldiers and we make gloves to protect soldiers' hands.

Hearing all this brought me back to that walk I took with Avery around Soho, when she pointed out that almost every item of clothing I was wearing had links to the U.S.

military.

Some of those threads were historical, like specific design features and technology that came straight from the Quartermaster Corps' design labs.

But also, many of today's outdoor clothes are still the product of this entwined industrial ecosystem, linking, you know, crunchy downjacketed REI shoppers with the soldiers on military bases around the world.

In her series, Avery admits that at the start of this reporting journey, she thought of herself as anti-war and basically unconnected from the doings of the U.S.

military.

But she said that visiting places like the Association of the United States Army Trade Show and seeing so many familiar brands on the convention floor, it opened her eyes to how deeply interwoven the military and the broader economy actually are.

What did you make of that, seeing these companies that you knew from kind of your civilian life represented at the Army Fair?

Avery started this process tugging on a single thread about how clothing had evolved out of military design.

But it ended up crystallizing something way bigger.

It gave her a sense that the entire economy is just more deeply intertwined with the military than she'd ever fully understood.

Has doing all this research made you think differently about the clothes that you wear or about the clothes that you see on the streets?

Totally, totally.

These two things feel like a little at odds.

Like one, this feeling of like, oh my God, I'm part of this web I didn't realize I was a part of that kind of makes me feel complicit with something that I feel conflicted about, but I'm going to wear more of it.

And these camo sweatpants are pretty sick.

Avery Truffleman, host of the podcast Articles of Interest.

Thanks for coming to Planet Money.

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