In 1973 Dorothy Retallack claimed that rock music made plants wither while classical music helped them flourish, a result that became a famous myth. Her work was not peer reviewed, she had little scientific training, and scientists strongly criticised it. Later studies of music and plant growth have often been poorly designed, with flawed statistics or missing methods. Plants do not have ears, but they do respond to physical sound waves: sound interacts with leaf hairs, some roots grow toward running water, and some plants defend themselves better after hearing insect predators. Because plants cannot tell musical genres apart, any effect of music is likely to be a side effect of vibrations rather than taste.

In 1909 D. W. Griffith made a 14-minute film about a speculator who corners the wheat market and doubles the price of bread. A farmer sows his field while a 'Wheat King' gambles in the Chicago wheat pit; bakers raise the loaf from five cents to ten and the poor line up for bread. Griffith cut back and forth between the farm, the feast and the breadline, a technique called parallel editing, so audiences saw both ends of the economy at once. The film drew on Frank Norris's stories and on a real scheme: months earlier Chicago financier James Patten had cornered wheat, sent bread prices up and made about $5 million, roughly $185 million today.