How did simple metal boxes contribute to history’s biggest reduction in poverty? In the series premiere of Johan Norberg's New and Improved, Norberg tells the story of the humble shipping container and how these standardized storage units dramatically changed our world.

With minor exceptions, just about everything you buy—or some part of it—came from another country. Before it ends up on a store shelf or dropped off at your front door, it spends some time in a shipping container. But it wasn’t always that way.

The invention of standardized shipping containers allowed vastly more people to participate freely in the world economy, forever improving commerce and making all of us better off through free trade.