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How Cargo Ships Explain the World | The Nation Podcast

A hotel for Thatcher’s fallen soldiers in the Falkland Islands. A hospital for Rikers inmates. A home for workers in the offshore fossil fuel industry.

These are just a few of the past lives of “Jascon 27” – a Scandinavian ship that is the subject of writer Ian Kumekawa’s new book, Empty Vessel: The Story of the Global Economy in One Barge.

The Vessel is, of course, a ship that transports people and goods. But, as journalist Atossa Araxia Abrahamian notes, and Kumekawa’s book reveals, it is also a bellwether of political movements and economic shifts, and a symbol of “the whims and desires”…

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