About Yesterday's Ledger

Each episode picks something that used to be everywhere in American life, like the Sears catalog, layaway, the pay phone or the five-and-dime, and follows the money: what it cost, how many hours of work that meant, who profited, and which change in the economy made it disappear.

It's nostalgia with numbers, not melodrama. We try to show what was gained and what was lost, and we explain the causes, not just the facts.

The Ledger Check

Two or three times per episode, we stop and run a Ledger Check: the price then, the same price in today's dollars (using the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics consumer price index), and how many hours a typical worker had to put in to pay for it.

How we make each episode

• Every number is checked against at least two sources. When the sources disagree, we give a range. Each episode page lists its sources.
• Real archive film. We use public-domain footage and photos, mostly from the Prelinger Archives at the Internet Archive, the Library of Congress and the U.S. National Archives.
• Reconstructions are labeled. Any picture that is an illustration rather than a real photo carries an "ILLUSTRATION" label on screen.
• The narration is an AI voice (ElevenLabs), reading scripts we research and write. We say so in every video description.

When to watch

New episodes come out every Wednesday and Saturday on our YouTube channel. Every episode also has a written version here, so you can read it at your own pace.

Spot a mistake? Have an idea?

We'd like to know. Use the suggestion form for both: new ideas, and corrections to anything we got wrong. Many of you lived through these years; you know things the archives don't.

Subscribe on YouTube