What is the public relations industry? When and how did it get its start?

I'm apparently late to the party on this one, having just heard about it last night. It's a short clip that tells the "story of stuff", obviously intended for a very broad audience including children and non-native English speakers, which means it's got a bit of a Sesame Street tone going on, but it's definitely worth a watch all the same.

It essentially presents a first-principles critique of consumer culture, and even gets around to pointing out something that I've found myself having to argue in the past: that recycling, while undeniably a good thing, is not any kind of solution to environmental problems even under ideal conditions.

Link: http://storyofstuff.com

A talk by Noam Chomsky at the New York Poetry Center [1970]

Part 1:

Continued...

Part 2:

Part 3: