Business/Disrupted
Business is an everyday thing, but everyday things can have untold stories - the stories about the things we never stopped to think about. Anyone can pay attention to financial ratios and textbook principles, but the best information lives in the stories that happen. What are the stories others have created with their business challenges? From starting a new business from scratch to reinventing oneself for their second third act, this show explores how these personal stories translate into the business context. Everybody loves a good fraud story. Everybody loves a good war story. We can delight in the lessons provided by others’ experiences, both good and bad, funny and tragic, and even dumb. They all plant the seeds for good, compelling, interesting stories. Join us as we ask “What were they thinking?” and dive into the minds of business leaders who are out there, doing it every day. We’ll explore businesses as diverse as space to podcasting, sovereign citizens to Ponzi schemes. Our goal will be to make sure you enjoy it every step of the way, as we challenge the things you thought you always knew.
- Update frequency
- every 15 days
- Average duration
- 54 minutes
- Episodes
- 34
- Years Active
- 2021 - 2022
Inside the District Attorney's Office and Criminal Justice Reform
In this episode, we look at the challenges of progressive criminal justice reform from the standpoint of the prosecutor, by looking at how the District Attorney's office functions. The ideals of crim…
The Unexpected Shackles of Binding Arbitration
If we think about arbitration at all, we think of it in terms of a dispute resolution mechanism written into large, complex contracts. We don't think of ordering a pizza online, streaming a movie, or…
When Crazy, Libelous, Crazy Came to Bankruptcy
Our story is one with a lot of facets: the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School; conspiracy theories bandied about for entertainment; the preternaturally unhinged and how they react to an equally…
The Shotgun Marriage of Bankruptcy & Mass Tort Cases (Podcast Edit)
Boy Scouts, Purdue Pharma, and now Johnson & Johnson - all are cases that are in bankruptcy because of thousands upon thousands of negligence cases; all are typical class actions; all are in bankrupt…
Being G. Washington
On Presidents' Day 2022, we talk with the nation's foremost historical actor of George Washington about what it is to inhabit the character of America's first General of the Armies, first President, …
The Tricky Business of Diversity & Inclusion
There's big money in employment - companies invest significantly in finding, onboarding and training the best employees they can get - it's good business to make sure those employees feel welcome. Di…
The Business of the U.S. Senate and Voting Rights
The United States Senate has become the focus of a power struggle between, on the one hand, a minority resistant to challenge, and a bare majority seeking to respond to a watershed moment in history …
The High-RPM World of Auto Racing
They say that if you want to make a small fortune in auto racing, you have to start with a large fortune. Between politics, mechanical issues, human factors, and the unknown, it's tough for a person …
Oxy is a Hell of a Drug
With the stroke of a pen, a U.S. District Court Judge overturned the confirmed bankruptcy plan of Purdue Pharma, placing everything up in the air. What's at stake: $4.3 billion from Purdue's owners, …
It's a Dog's Word - The Business of Service Dogs
Companion Dogs, Assistance Dogs, Seeing-Eye Dogs, Emotional Support Dogs - they seem the same to the uninitiated, but they're very different. We talk with two of the most respected leaders in the Ser…
The Low Cost of Second Chances
Every day, prisoners are released from imprisonment back into society without so much as a thought as to what they do to become productive again. How do we help the newly returning citizens start bei…
The Complex Economic Maze of Adoption
Adoption is a process that brings adoptive parents, birth parents, and adoptees into a common set of events, but in wildly differing and often unpredictable ways. Things that those outside the adopti…
The Internet Radio is for Porn
Porn, adult entertainment, pornography, smut, whatever you call it, is big business. More than $97 Billion per year big. And, amusingly enough, much of it is consumed only ten minutes at a time. We s…
The State of State Politics
In our continuing series on the business of politics, we look to state political parties - where the real action happens. Dealing with state, local and national races, state political parties are whe…
Politics - the political operatives
Politics happens because of people - very skilled, dedicated people. So do political operations in labor unions, in elected officials’ offices, in national political parties. We discuss the ins and o…
Did We Break the Law When We Weren't Breaking the Law?
From world-class skier to waitress, to administrative help to a real estate developer to the creator of a $4 million business - a poker game for the rich and powerful; only to pick up, change coasts …
Politics - It's not all about kissing babies
The path to elected office starts years before a candidate declares and starts raising money, knocking on doors, giving speeches and, yes, kissing some babies. But once the campaign starts, it's a co…
The Messy Business of Mass Torts
Purdue Pharma. Asbestos. Boy Scouts. Tobacco. Birth Defects. Medical Devices. The Opioid Crisis. Airline accidents. The common thread tying all of these things together is that they generate litigati…
NRA - WTF?
In early 2021, lobbying behemoth the National Rifle Association filed a chapter 11 case in Texas, intending to use the bankruptcy process not for financial or operational reorganization, but to escap…
The Music Industry, Unplugged (Part 2)
Musicians invented the gig economy. Living one job to another, having to be performer, CEO, marketing, advertising, and HR, and still find time to keep their skills honed and practice. Add to this th…