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‘What would you say to the person who made your … ?’

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Back to school

‘What would you say to the person who made your … ?’
A ‘pop the bubble’ icebreaker task for trade justice education
Selected poscards from our wesbite’s launch at the Eden Project in 2011 in slideshow above.

If you’re starting out some trade justice education – at any level, and with any students or public you would like to engage – it’s important to assume that they may already know and care about the issues you want to address. A simple way to find out is to a) encourage them to think about a commodity that’s important to them and then b) ask them what they would say to someone working in its supply chain if they had the opportunity. We have written about a couple of times when we have done this – when we launched followthethings.com in the Tropical Biome at the Eden Project in 2011, and when we were invited to introduce trade justice to a class of primary school students in Exeter in 2015. In both cases, this task needed a good prompt. At the Eden Project, the prompt was the Eden Project – the Tropical Biome was stocked with plants that are the sources of everyday commodities and their labelling and the design of the space made these connections. So we set up our card writing station to catch people as they walked by. In the primary school, the teacher asked the students what their favourite foods were, CEO Ian did some ‘who made my stuff?‘ research on a few, showed the class his findings, and the students were tasked to write to a corporation or supply chain worker that was mentioned with their thoughts. There’s always the option, if the writers (and their parents / guardians where appropriate) give their permission, of making this writing public, posting it online, tagging the corporations, asking for replies. The aim of this task is to gently ‘pop the bubble’ of commodity fetishism in order to encourage an appreciation of the work that has gone into making the things that people love to eat, wear and buy. This summary may be enough for you to try this for yourself. But we’ve also re-published a couple of blog posts below about our experiences of trying this out for ourselves.

Page reference: Ian Cook & Joe Lambert (2025) ‘What would you say to the person who made your … ?‘ followthethings.com/what-would-you-say-to-the-person-who-made-your.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 19 minutes.

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Who made my stuff? (⏵ Gillette Razor Blades)

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Follow it yourself (page) | Follow it yourself (examples) | Health & Beauty (⏵ example)

Who made my stuff?” | example ⏵ Gillete Razor Blades
A ‘follow it yourself’ detective work task suitable for activists, journalists, filmmakers, artists, researchers, teachers and students
CEO Ian’s ‘Traces of labour’ YouTube playlist embedded above. Can be used as a task / lesson taster. The jeans paper mentioned is Hauser (2004)

Behind the followthethings.com website lies a university undergraduate module called ‘Geographies of material culture’ taught be CEO Ian from 2000 to 2025. The first version of the module (2000-2008) encouraged students to do some online detective work to see if they could find out who had made a commodity that mattered to them. He wanted his students to appreciate if and how their everyday lives were made possible – in part – by the work done by supply chain workers elsewhere in the world. He wanted to them to find out, and think, about the responsibilities that they and others had for any trade injustices they found in the process. The results were always surprising, and Ian started to share some of their writing (with permission) with geography school teachers which led Ian and his students being invited to publish some in teacher-facing journals (see Angus et al 2001, Cook et al 2006, 2007a&b). Because this detective work always began in their personal worlds of consumption, Ian was invited to bring this ‘follow it yourself’ approach into a Geographical Association and Royal Geographical Society project called the ‘Action Plan for Geography’ (see Martin 2008, Griffiths 2009). This, in turn, helped the ‘follow the thing’ approach to gain a wider audience after it the GA and RGS wanted it to be included in the 2013 UK National Curriculum for Geography as a means to teach students about trade (see Parkinson & Cook 2013, University of Exeter 2014). Ian taught this approach to trainee geography teachers at the University of Nottingham who tried this out on their placements and wrote #followtheteachers posts for the followthethings.com blog (see Whipp 2013). It was also fleshed out in the ‘Who made my clothes?” online course that Ian co-authored and presented for the Fashion Revolution movement (Cook et al 2017-2018: see here). There’s one main principle in this ‘follow it yourself’ work: if you know how and where to look, you can find a connection between your life and the lives of others who have made anything that matters to you, anything that’s part of your life. There’s been an explosion of journalism, NGO activism, academic research and corporate social responsibility initiatives relating to trade justice since the 1990s that means that there are secondary data sources that you can find, sift and create a story about anything that comes from anywhere – or so it seems. Doing this detective work in groups can encourage diverse learners to share their expertise (e.g. by drawing on their experiences of living in different parts of the world, and being able to research in different languages: see Bowstead 2014). Doing it for younger learners can motivate them to write (e.g. by asking them what they would say to the person who picked the cocoa in their Milky Bar buttons, for example – see Lambert 2015). And doing his kind of thing as an academic researcher can help you to produce ‘follow the thing’ publications (see Taffell 2022). We have updated the advice we gave in the 2000s and set it out below as a three stage process: A – reading the results of other ‘follow it yourself’ research; B – choosing the thing you want to follow; and C – doing the ‘follow it yourself’ detective work to find out who made it for you and the trade justice issues that come with this. To illustrate what this research is like to do, what sources you can find where, and how to find and follow a productive trail, we have researched a new example from start to finish: who made Ian’s pack of Gillette razor blades? Just click ⏵ example to find out.

Page reference: Ian Cook et al (2025) Who made my stuff? followthethings.com/who-made-my-stuff.shtml (last accessed <add date here>)

Estimated reading time (including example detective work): 80 minutes

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Blood, Sweat & Takeaways

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Grocery

Blood, Sweat & Takeaways
A four-episode reality TV series produced directed & produced by James Christie-Miller for Ricochet Films for television broadcast on BBC3.
Sample scene embedded above. Full series available on Box of Broadcasts (with institutional login) here.

Lauren, 21, and loves luxury food. Jess, 19, is a fussy eater. Manos, 20, loves fast food. Josh, 20, loves to cook. Stacey, 20, is an ethical shopper. Olu, 25, is a fitness fanatic. But this group of multicultural Brits who don’t seem to care where their food comes from. Until they are approached by a TV company which challenges them to travel to Indonesia and Thailand and to step into the shoes of the farm, factory and trawler workers who source and process it for export. Over four episodes – on Tuna, Prawns, Rice and Chicken – they’re filmed working alongside supply chain workers, earning and spending the same 40p an hour wages, and living in the same places. They relentlessly gut, behead and loin tuna fish in a factory. They work in waist-deep mud farming prawns and up to their ankles in water in a rice paddy field. It’s hot. All they have to eat each day is a banana and a slice of bread. This is a shock to their systems. This is car crash reality TV. They crack under the pressure, retch, cry, faint, fall out, fight, refuse to work, slow down the production line, get sick, feel guilty, insult and patronise their co-workers and escape to a comfortable hotel, eat at McDonalds and get first class medical care. Olu is sent home after a fight with Manos. He’s replaced by James, a young farmer. At least he knows where food comes from. But, as they get over the shock, episode by episode, they are humbled by the experience and become more appreciative consumers. This is the second ‘Blood, sweat and…’ series broadcast by the BBC. And it’s equally successful, attracting big audiences, winning awards and being shown around the world. Its aim is to encourage young people to think about who makes their stuff, and to find their own solutions like the cast members do. Because this is reality TV, much of the discussion focuses on the cast and how ‘spoilt’ they seem to be, how terrible they are as British ‘ambassadors’ in Thailand and Indonesia, how distastasteful it is for them to ogle at squalour, and how easy it is for them – unlike the people they’re working alongside – to leave. Critics say that its reality TV format encourages an enjoyment of the casts’ meltdowns more than their thoughtful reflections. Others quibble the facts and argue that the series’ narrative arc is a work of fiction. Others say that it places too much emphasis on consumer awareness, without provinding any ideas about what viewers should do next. And there’s nothing in this series about other responsible actors in these supply chains (for a comparison, see our page on the BBC’s ‘Mangetout’ documentary here) and nothing about the need for structural change (e.g. living wage legislation). But the BBC sets up a web forum for people to discuss these issues and one cast member ends up on a late night BBC news show challenging some glib trade arguments made by a represenative of the British Retail Consortium. So, what does this TV series do for its British cast? Its Thai and Indonesian participants? The production company? The last one is easy. The success of this second ‘Blood sweat and…’ series is followed by the making of the next series. ‘Blood, sweat & luxuries’. Then, years later, TV production executives in Holland and the Czech Republic reported that it has inspired new reality TV series. The whole series was uploaded to YouTube in full in 2022, where a whole new generation of viewers – around the world – could engage with the series, its characters and its message.

Page reference: Harriet Clarke, Ben Thomson, Victoria Bartley, Katie Ibbetson-Price, Emma Christie-Miller & Harry Schofield (2025) Blood, Sweat & Takeaways. followthethings.com/blood-sweat-takeaways.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 102 minutes.

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Gravesend, 2007

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Electronics

Gravesend, 2007
An art work / short film by Steve McQueen premiered at the Venice Biennale and exhibited at the Renaissance Society in Chicago, USA in 2007 and at the Uneven Geographies exhibition at the Nottingham Contemporary Gallery, UK in 2010.
Gallery photo above. Renaissance Society exhibition photos here. Acquired by the Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA here. Not available to watch online.

After a decade of rare earth metal mining in the Democratic Republic of the Congo for use in the growing consumer electronics sector, and recognising the history of African colonial plunder artist Steve McQueen sets out to make a short film that brings this story into one piece of art work. He travels between the coltan mines of the DRC and a coltan processing facilities in the UK. The miners, sometimes children, dig coltan from muddy trenches. This is brutal and poorly paid work wrecks the environment and funds a civil war in which 4 million people have lost their lives. The specialist metals which emerge from this ravaged place are perfect ingredients for modern consumer electronics, because they can conduct electricity without getting too hot. McQueen visits a pristine, computerised factory facility in the UK where this coltan ore is processed. The film he makes out of these loaded and shockingly different elements is described by critics and viewers as abstract, poetic, animated (sometimes), deafeningly loud (sometimes), beautiful, intense, opaque, meditative, melancholy, that works though ‘phenomenological estrangement’, has no titles or narration and scenes and moods that leap between places and dissolve into one another. The coltan miners appear in it as ‘ghostly absences of light’. For McQueen, this isn’t a documentary film. It doesn’t give supply chain workers a voice. It’s a film about looking. It takes its name from a town in the British county of Kent, which sits on the banks of the River Thames where Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness book begins. You can only watch it in an art gallery when it’s being exhibited. Some commenter are impressed with its intellectual purpose and depth, while others say they need to read the museum brochure to understand what it’s about (e.g. coltan). It seems from what people say that this isn’t an activist film or art work. It’s not setting out to motivate its viewers to understand and to act. But it is, for some, intensely haunting. Maybe you have to be there, watching it in that gallery space, with other people, other art work, the signage, the space, the lighting. This is a space where its viewers to ‘make the necessary connections.’

Page reference: Tom Bollands, Alistair Brouard, Amelia Cozon, James Hornsby, Phoebe Park & Louise Richardson (2024) Gravesend, 2007. followthethings.com/gravesend.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 25 minutes.

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iPhone 4CF

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Electronics

iPhone 4CF
A spoof website, press release and direct action by The Yes Men & students from the Parsons New School for Design via the Yes Lab.
Website pages embedded in slideshow above. Original iPhone CF website – www.apple-cf.com – shut down. Now partly available here.

Culture-jammers the Yes Men create a spoof ‘Apple’ website to launch a new iPhone whose ingredients are ‘conflict free’. They announce that you can upgrade your iPhone 4 to the conflict-free version free of charge. Working with students from the Parsons School in New York, they dress up as Apple Store employees and hand out leaflets that encourage shoppers to go inside and upgrade their iPhone to a conflict-free one, at no charge. This is such a brilliant idea, especially with all the recent news stories about a civil war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo where these regular iPhones’ rare earth ‘conflict minerals’ could be sourced. For many, Apple is taking the lead in this highly competitive and fast moving sector. As it always loves to shout about. It’s acting to remove conflict minerals in its supply chains, and inviting its shoppers to come on board as ethical consumers. When the shoppers take their leaflets into the store and are refused their free upgrade… When they realise that a ‘conflict free iPhone’ does not exist… When the Apple Store staff, many of whom were pleasantly surprised that Apple was doing this, realise that some of the people who look like their colleagues may be activists causing trouble… When the police are called in… When the story gets into the press (the whole idea) and Apple is forced to quickly publish a press release denying that a conflict-free iPhone exists… When the Yes Men quickly release a fake Apple press release that explains what the company is (not) doing to remove conflict minerals from its supply chains… When Apple forces the web host for The Yes Men’s fake iPhone 4CF website to take it down within hours… … the knowledge that Apple’s iPhones contain ‘conflict minerals’ has become an international news story. It helps that the Yes Men are highly experienced corporate impersonators (they call this ‘identity correction’). It helps that the carefully planned and often hilarious unravelling of the lies they tell are a magnet for business journalists who often don’t have many fun stories to report. And it helps that this is a positive critique: it’s perfectly possible that Apple could produce a conflict-free iPhone if it put its mind to it. This isn’t a negative, anti-capitalist critique of Apple – although the company seems to respond as if it is – it’s a good idea. They’ve shown what it looks like. How Apple could market it. That shoppers would trade their only iPhones for a conflict-free upgrade. Critics call the activists’ understanding of supply chain sourcing and the war in the DRC simplistic, but this prank kickstarts a debate which – years later – saw the production of conflict free smartphones. We plan to add a page to followthethings.com about the most famous of these – the Fairphone – in due course.

Page reference: Jack Parkin (2018) iPhone 4CF. followthethings.com/iphone-4cf.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Page also available in Finnish here (coming soon)

Estimated reading time: tbc minutes.

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A Gadget To Die For

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Electronics

A Gadget To Die For
Front page headline and feature story in by Martin Hickman in the Independent Newspaper, plus a timeline of corporate and activist activity into which this story fits.
Front page featured above. The full text of the article is available below, and on the newspaper website here.

On May 27th 2010, the UK’s Independent newspaper published one of its most memorable front pages. This was the day that Apple’s new iPad device was being launched in the UK. The hype for this product had been extreme. At its launch, Apple CEO Steve Jobs had said it could help consumers to do things ‘in a much more intimate, intuitive and fun way than ever before’. Classic commodity fetishism! Apple Stores had so many orders that they had to meet. The factory where they were being made in China – owned by the Foxconn corporation – had to keep up with demand. Those customers couldn’t be kept waiting. But the hours and working conditions that the people making these iPads in Foxconn’s factory had to endure were too much for some. Reports started to emerge of extreme levels of stress driving some workers to make their way to the roof of the factory to jump to their deaths. One of these workers was Ma Xiangqian, whose family carried a photo portrait of their son to a protest outside the factory that was broadcast on international news. Juxtaposing a photo of this new device and photo of a worker who committed suicide with the perfect double-meaning title ‘A gadget to die for’ contributed to the sullying of Apple’s marketing plans. More importantly, it was just one example of the sustained attention to the working conditions in the company’s Foxconn factories in China that was building at this time (e.g. see the factory worker suicide prevention level on the Phone Story game here). On followthethings.com, we tend to choose individual examples of trade justice activism and find out where they came from, and what impacts they have had on, for example, the pay and conditions of supply chain workers. But in this case, it’s not just this one story that made a difference. This page outlines a different story. The Independent story is copied in full, and is followed – like a standard followthethings.com page – by everything we could find about how it was discussed and what impact it had (not much). Then, below this, we try to place this news story in context, starting with the launch of the iPad by Apple CEO Steve Jobs, then following iPad news stories as they were published over the following months, then finding when and how the ‘iPad suicide’ story came to public attention (in the Independent and elsewhere), and then tracking this scandal and Apple’s reactions to it. This larger context had an important impact, forcing corporate change and – arguably – improving pay and conditions in Foxconn factories. More than anything, this page tries to show how trade justice activism works when its bubbles up in multiple places and formats, not necessarily in a wholly coordinated way. For this example, it shows the importance of on-the-ground student activists – in this case the Hong Kong based Students & Scholars Against Corporate Misbehaviour (SACOM) – investigating, protesting, creating and promoting media content that others – like Independent journalists Martin Hickman – can pick up and run with.

Article reference: Martin Hickman (2010) A gadget to die for? Concern over human cost overshadows iPad launch. The Independent 27 May (www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/concern-over-human-cost-overshadows-ipad-launch-1983888.html last accessed 4 August 2010)

Page reference: Ian Cook et al (2024) A gadget to die for? followthethings.com/a-gadget-to-die-for.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 42 minutes.

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A Decent Factory

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Electronics

A Decent Factory (alternative title Made in China)
A documentary film directed by Thomas Balmès for Margot Films, Making Movies Oy, France 2, BBC Storyville & YLE
Film clip embedded above. Search online to stream the whole film here.

In the mid 2000s, the Finnish company Nokia was the world’s largest producer of mobile phones. French film-maker Thomas Balmès works moves to Finland and spends 18 months in the country before getting permission to follow its executive Hanna Kosinen and business ethics consultant Louise Jamison as they undertake the company’s first ‘ethical audit’ of a mobile phone factory in China. Hanna and Louise have been tasked by Nokia to see for themselves if and how the company can exercise its ‘corporate social responsibilities’ both to its shareholders and to its factory workers. After a detailed tour of the plant, and some challenging and moving interviews with some of its managers and young female factory floor staff (in their cramped dorm rooms), they have to write a report for Nokia about its CSR in practice. It’s not flattering. The factory isn’t reaching even the low Chinese government expectations about minimum wages and working conditions. In the early days of a technology which later became synonymous with appalling labour conditions (see our page on the 2010 iPad factory suicides here), there was a company, and some company executives, who wanted the people making their branded products to enjoy a decent standard of living. But when they visit – as Balmès’ film shows – they get a shock and start to wonder why their principles don’t seem to be possible in practice. Nokia’s managers are ‘walking a tightrope between profits and law’. They are disarmingly frank in front of the camera, until they find out that this isn’t a films solely for internal Nokia consumption. The film that Balmès produces is darkly funny and tragic, It ends with Hanna leaving the company to pursue a more ethical career, where she can make a difference. This is an important, insightful film. It brings corporate managers into view in vivid and candid ways. It’s not only the factory workers who are ‘humanised’. In this film, its corporate managers and their consultants whom audiences are invited to empathise with. The people employed, internally, to hold a company accountable. These executives are not just being interviewed for a ‘talking head’ perspectives and/or briefly followed around a production site (see our page on the BBC Mangetout documentary for comparison here). These executives are not being deliberately embarrassed or demonised. Audience members can see what they are tasked to do. The ethical principles they would like to see in practice. Where they go. Who they talk to. How this affects them emotionally. How their personal and company principles work out in practice. What this makes them think about their job, the company they work for, and its stated corporate values. And whether they can stomach the disappointment when reality bites, and the change that’s needed doesn’t seem possible?

Page reference: Thirii Myint & Chris Lee (2011) A Decent Factory. followthethings.com/a-decent-factory.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 29 minutes.

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The Connectivitea Of Britain And Sri Lanka

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Grocery

The Connectivitea Of Britain And Sri Lanka
A dissertation by Sarah Wrathmell, submitted as part of their BA Geography degree at the University of Birmingham, UK.
Sample pages from its findings chapters are embedded in the slideshow above. Click them to read the dissertation.

Undergraduate Geography student Sarah Wrathmell has an ambitious idea for her dissertation research. She wants to travel to Sri Lanka to find the people who grow her morning cup of tea on a plantation in Kandy, Sri Lanka. She plans to ‘follow the thing’ and to undertake some multisited ethnographic fieldwork along the supply chain of ‘Tillings’ (a pseudonym) loose breakfast tea. She ends up writing about six places: the tea garden where the tea is grown, its collection spaces, its production factory (all in Sri Lanka), its blending factory, a specialist tea shop, and a tea garden where she shares a pot of tea with a group of friends (all in the UK). She talks to pickers, packers and drivers; visits factories and talks to people tasting, processing and packaging it to exacting standards; and finally drinks that tea with those drinkers. This is embodied, sensory work that she has to – somehow – get on the page. What she wants to understand is what, and who, are the ingredients in her tea? And how are the lives of the people involved in making and drinking it interrelated? As a reader, your job is to follow her on her travels as she tries to make sense of this. Its assessors say it’s a fantastic piece of work. So, it’s submitted for a national dissertation prize. It wins this unanimously. We have a grainy .pdf copy that you can download and read. It’s important to show that not only are there high profile films, publications, and other forms of trade justice research and activism to pay attention to. Students have been doing this work too, for much smaller audiences, for years. What can this work look like?

Dissertation reference: Sarah Wrathmell (2003) The Connectivitea of Britain & Sri Lanka. BA Geography Dissertation: University of Birmingham, UK (followthethings.com/the-connectivitea-of-Britain-and-sri-lanka.shtml last accessed <insert date here>)

Page reference: Sarah Wrathmell (2024) The Connectivitea of Britain & Sri Lanka. followthethings.com/the-connectivitea-of-Britain-and-sri-lanka.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 60 minutes.

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Who made my clothes?

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Follow it yourself | Follow it yourself

Who made my clothes?
A ‘follow it yourself’ detective work task originally written for learners taking Fashion Revolution’s / University of Exeter’s ‘Who made my clothes?’ free online course starting in 2017 .
Introductory video embedded above. Course outline available on the Futurelearn website here (course no longer available). Course instagram feed here and twitter feed here. Search for learners’ blog posts here.

In the summers of 2017 and 2018, we ran a free online course called ‘Who made my clothes?’ with and for the Fashion Revolution movement. 16,000 people from all over the world, many with experience working in the industry, joined us for three weeks to Be Curious (week 1), Find Out (week 2), and Do Something (week 3). We’re hoping the course will run again but, in the meantime, wanted to share some of its content: the parts where we showed how fashion’s supply chains work and the places and lives they connect (via an excellent webdoc series from NPR which is featured on our site here) and then how you can do this research yourselves, with your own clothes, to create your own personal answers to the question ‘Who made my clothes?’ You can try this for yourself, set it for your class to do, whatever you like. It starts with each person choosing an item of clothing that’s special to them, one they wear every day, one they know nothing about. The mystery helps. Follow our advice… and see what you can find, and how you can creatively express and share these findings. This task will in volve a lot of educated guesswork, but you can always get in touch with the brands to see if you’ve got it right! We’ll add some of our learners’ posts along the way so you can see what’s possible.

Page reference: Ian Cook, Verity Jones & Kellie Cox (2025) Who made my clothes? followthethings.com/who-made-my-clothes.shtml (last accessed <add date here>)

Estimated reading time: 19 minutes

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Tangled Routes: Women, Work And Globalization On The Tomato Trail

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Grocery

Tangled Routes: Women, Work And Globalization On The Tomato Trail
An academic book written by Deborah Barndt published by Rowman & Littlefield
2007 second edition Google Books preview embedded above. Search online to buy a copy here.

In 1994, preparing to do some undergraduate teaching, Environmental Studies professor Deborah Barndt finds a popular educational tool called A whirlwind tour of economic integration with your guide, Tomasita the tomato. She thinks this fictional tomato is the perfect etrée for her students’ understanding of cross-border trade – in this case from Mexico to Canada – and the often confusing complexities of globalisation – including messy relations between corporate power, genetically modified seeds, pesticides, stolen indigenous land, exploited peasant labour and environmental racism. What follows is a 5 year feminist participatory research project – called the Tomasita Project – which connects the lives of tomato growers, truckers, checkout workers and other supply chain workers living and working in Mexico and Canada. What she discovers and tries to convey is the clash between a ‘globalisation from above’ – the uniform, genetically-engineered, neoliberal, NAFTA-friendly tomato trade – and ‘globalisation from below’ – grass roots social justice projects working across borders and producing alternative foods. As Tomasita explained when Barndt first saw her story, the tomato is an iconic crop in the Americas. A brilliant one to follow, loading with meanings. It was native to South America, was first domesticated in Mexico, is central to the diets in Mexico, the USA and Canada, can be grown (at least seasonally) in all three countries, and was ‘one of the winners for Mexico in the NAFTA reshuffle’ (Barndt 2002a, p.82). What readers value the most is her book’s ‘feminist act’ that makes visible women workers in the global food system, and the way that it brings feminist theories into understandings of international trade. We researched this book early in its life (in 2011) and are keen to return to it to flesh out this page one day. This is an early, innovative, important and inspiring example of ‘follow the thing’ scholar-activism.

Page reference: Robert Conor Burke (2024) Tangled Routes: Women, Work And Globalization On The Tomato Trail. followthethings.com/tangled-routes-women-work-and-globalization-on-the-tomato-trail.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 20 minutes.

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