pplpod

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode!

In the 1870s, taking a photograph meant hauling glass plates, toxic chemicals, and a dark tent into the field. George Eastman, a bank clerk from Rochester, found the equipment unbearable and began experimenting with dry plates in his mother's kitchen in 1880. This episode follows his progress from the Eastman Dry Plate Company to a roll holder, a paper film, and finally the transparent nitrocellulose film patented in 1889 with chemist Henry Reichenbach.

The 1888 Kodak camera turned that chemistry into a mass habit. It was a leather covered box with no viewfinder, sold for 25 dollars and preloaded with 100 exposures. Customers mailed the whole camera to Rochester with a 10 dollar fee and got back prints and a reloaded camera. Eastman then built a global empire on film sales, vertical integration, and a tightly controlled workforce, before failing health led him to end his own life at his home in Rochester.

• Eastman invented the word Kodak with his mother using an anagram set. He wanted a name that was short, impossible to mispronounce, and unlike any existing word, and he favored the letter K.
• To widen the market he launched the Kodak Girl advertising campaign and, in 1900, the Brownie camera, marketed directly to children.
• In 1908 he made Kodak the sole supplier of raw film to the Motion Picture Patents Company formed by Thomas Edison and major producers.
• When World War I disrupted chemical supplies, he bought a hardwood distillation plant in Tennessee to make his own solvents. It grew into the Eastman Chemical Company.
• His profit sharing, compensation fund, and discounted stock for employees were designed in part to keep unions out, while his hiring excluded African Americans, Catholics, and Jewish people.

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode!

By January 2021, hedge funds had sold short roughly 140 percent of GameStop's public float, a number made possible because the same shares were lent out again and again. This episode explains how that structural trap was sprung. Michael Burry and Chewy co-founder Ryan Cohen took stakes in the struggling retailer, and Keith Gill, posting as Roaring Kitty, argued for months on Reddit's WallStreetBets that the stock was undervalued. When retail traders piled into cheap call options, market makers were forced to buy shares to hedge, and the price leapt from about 17 dollars to more than 500.

The story then turns to January 28, when Robinhood and Webull disabled the buy button. The cause was not a rescue of hedge funds but a collateral demand from clearinghouses worried about the two day settlement cycle. The restriction crashed the price, united politicians from opposite ends of the spectrum in outrage, and prompted lawsuits and congressional hearings. The episode closes with the uncomfortable accounting of who actually came out ahead.

• Keith Gill invested about 53,000 dollars in GameStop call options in the summer of 2019. By January 27, 2021, the position was worth 48 million dollars.
• Melvin Capital lost 53 percent of its asset value and needed a 2.75 billion dollar cash injection from Citadel and Point72. Short sellers lost an estimated 6 billion dollars overall.
• The frenzy spread to other heavily shorted names: AMC rose 480 percent, BlackBerry doubled, and headphone maker Koss surged more than 3,700 percent.
• GameStop lost 60 percent of its value on February 2 alone after buying was restricted, eventually shedding 80 percent from its peak.
• Institutions were among the biggest winners. Senvest Management made a 700 million dollar profit, and BlackRock's stake swelled to 2.6 billion dollars at the peak.

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode!

The legend says that in 1949 Frank X. McNamara finished a meal at Major's Cabin Grill in New York City, reached for his wallet, and found his pocket empty. Mortified, he dreamed up a multipurpose charge card and pitched it the next day to his lawyer, Ralph Schneider, and his friend Alfred Bloomingdale. This episode examines that origin story, including the conflicting accounts of what happened and the claim by press agent Matty Simmons that the whole scene was invented for publicity.

Whatever the truth, the business was real. Diners Club launched on February 8, 1950 with 1.5 million dollars in capital, 200 members, and 27 participating restaurants. Cardholders paid 5 dollars a year and settled one bill each month, while restaurants gave up 7 percent of every check in exchange for free spending customers. Membership reached 42,000 by the end of 1951. Then, in 1952, McNamara sold his entire stake for 200,000 dollars and walked away from the industry he had started.

• In February 1950 McNamara returned to Major's Cabin Grill and paid with a cardboard card and his signature, an event historians call the First Supper.
• Diners Club paid restaurants before collecting from members, which made it a short term lender managing a risky float in an era before credit scores.
• Bloomingdale briefly left to start a California rival called Dine and Sign, then merged it back into Diners Club.
• The card's success alarmed banks and prompted BankAmericard and Master Charge, the networks now known as Visa and Mastercard.
• The brand became a cultural shorthand, inspiring a 1961 board game and a 1963 Danny Kaye film, and it was later owned by Citibank and then bought by Discover in 2008 for 165 million dollars.

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode!

In 2017 the fidget spinner was sold to millions of parents as a tool that could ease anxiety, help with ADHD, and sharpen focus. This episode takes the toy apart, starting with the physics. A ball bearing at the center removes nearly all friction, while weighted lobes push mass outward, raising the moment of inertia and turning the spinner into a small handheld gyroscope. The result is a smooth glide and a slight pushback against the hand that people find soothing.

The history is messier than the mechanics. Major outlets credited chemical engineer Catherine Hettinger, whose 1993 patent actually described a one-piece plastic toy with no bearing at all. The modern design came around 2014 from Seattle area IT worker Scott McCoskery, who built a metal device called the Torqbar to keep his hands busy during conference calls. His utility patent was not granted until March 2018, long after overseas factories had copied the idea, added medical claims to the packaging, and flooded stores worldwide.

• The New York Times, The Guardian, and Bloomberg all named Hettinger as the inventor, repeating a story about a patent she let lapse in 2005 because she could not afford the renewal fee.
• McCoskery filed a provisional patent in May 2016 and a full application in May 2017, leaving no granted utility patent in force when demand exploded.
• Studies in Applied Cognitive Psychology and the Journal of Attention Disorders linked spinner use to reduced memory performance and more attention lapses, even among users who believed the toys helped.
• Researchers contrast gross motor movement like pacing, which can aid people with ADHD, with the fine motor manipulation of a spinner, which competes for attention.
• A 10 year old girl in Texas needed surgery after a spinner piece lodged in her esophagus, and Bluetooth models were reported to catch fire while charging.

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode!

Arthur E. Andersen was orphaned at 16, worked as a mail boy in Chicago, studied at night, and in 1908 became the youngest certified public accountant in Illinois. The firm he co-founded in 1913 rested on a motto inherited from his mother: think straight, talk straight. He insisted that an auditor's real boss is the public investor, not the company paying the fee, and he built the profession's first centralized training program to make that standard uniform across every office.

This episode traces how that culture came apart after his death in 1947. A booming consulting practice outgrew the audit side, and a decade of infighting ended in a split that created Accenture. Left without its economic engine, the audit firm bent to its clients, signing off on Enron's shell company accounting and sidelining a partner who objected. When Enron fell, shredded documents led to a 2002 conviction for obstruction of justice that destroyed an 89 year old firm and nearly 28,000 jobs.

• When a railway executive demanded he approve manipulated books, Andersen replied that there was not enough money in the city of Chicago to make him sign. He was fired, and the railroad went bankrupt months later.
• The firm's staff were so uniform in training and discipline that industry insiders nicknamed them the Arthur Androids.
• In August 2000 an arbitrator let the consultants leave in exchange for the family name and 1.2 billion dollars held in escrow. Audit chief Jim Wadia resigned four hours later because the board had wanted at least 4 billion.
• Partner Carl Bass repeatedly warned that Enron's accounting was an illusion. After Enron executives complained, Andersen removed him from oversight of the account.
• In 2005 the Supreme Court unanimously overturned the conviction over flawed jury instructions, but by then only about 200 employees remained.

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode!

Edwin H. Land left Harvard after his freshman year to chase one problem: how to control the direction of light. He solved it by embedding microscopic iodine crystals in stretched plastic, creating a polarizing sheet that cut glare. The company he founded in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1937 sold that material as sunglasses, 3D movie glasses, goggles for military working dogs, and night viewing devices. Then, in the late 1940s, Land collapsed the darkroom into the film itself and gave the world instant photography.

This episode follows Polaroid from the Land Camera Model 95 to the SX-70 of 1972, a camera that ejected a sealed, dry print that developed in daylight. It also covers the battles of the 1970s: a ten year patent fight with Kodak, an employee movement protesting the use of Polaroid technology in apartheid South Africa, and the costly failure of Polavision. That flop ended Land's 43 years as chief executive and foreshadowed the company's bankruptcy in October 2001.

• Land's instant film attached a foil pod of jelly-like developer to each frame. Steel rollers crushed the pod and spread the chemicals as the film left the camera.
• The SX-70 relied on opacifying dyes that formed a temporary chemical curtain over the image, then cleared as the color picture appeared.
• After Kodak launched instant cameras in 1976, Land sued for patent infringement. A federal court ordered Kodak out of the business, and it paid a settlement of over 900 million dollars.
• Employees Caroline Hunter and Ken Williams formed the Polaroid Revolutionary Workers Movement in 1970 after finding the company's technology was used for South African passbook photos. Both were fired, and Polaroid ended direct sales there in 1977.
• Polavision, an instant home movie system launched in 1977, arrived just as VHS and Betamax took over and led to an 89 million dollar write-off.

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode!

In December 2013, IBM software engineer Billy Markus and Adobe marketer Jackson Palmer built a cryptocurrency in a few hours to mock the speculation swirling around Bitcoin. They put a Shiba Inu meme and Comic Sans on a coin forked from Luckycoin, itself a fork of Litecoin. Because it could be mined on ordinary computers and confirmed transactions every minute, Dogecoin drew a million visitors to its site within 30 days and attracted a community more interested in tipping strangers than getting rich.

This episode traces how that community gave way to something stranger. Early fans refunded hacking victims, sent the Jamaican bobsled team to Sochi, and sponsored a NASCAR driver. Then both founders walked away, the supply cap was abandoned, and by 2021 celebrity tweets, trading bots, and Robinhood turned the coin into a speculative frenzy worth as much as 85 billion dollars. The story ends with meme money buying stakes in European sports teams and sharing an acronym with a government advisory group.

• On Christmas Day 2013, a hacker redirected transactions on Doge Wallet and stole millions of coins. The community's Save Dogemas drive refunded every victim within a month.
• In 2014 supporters raised 36,000 dollars for the Jamaican bobsled team, more than 30,000 dollars for a well in Kenya, and 55,000 dollars to wrap Josh Wise's car for Talladega.
• Dogecoin adds 5 billion new coins every year with no cap, a design that discourages hoarding and encourages spending.
• During Elon Musk's Saturday Night Live appearance in May 2021 the price fell nearly 30 percent. A 258 billion dollar lawsuit accusing him of running a pyramid scheme was dismissed in August 2024.
• An entity called the House of Doge became the largest equity holder in the Italian soccer club Triestina and invested in hockey teams in Switzerland and Milan.

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode!

In 1827, Swiss Italian brothers Giovanni and Pietro Delmonico ran a modest pastry shop at 23 William Street in New York. This episode follows the 200 year life of what it became. Their nephew Lorenzo arrived in 1831 and transformed the business, scouring the markets at four in the morning and building a serious wine list. After the Great Fire of 1835 wiped out the family's properties, they opened a grand building on Beaver Street in 1837, complete with columns they claimed came from the ruins of Pompeii.

Chef Charles Ranhofer, hired in 1862, made the kitchen a laboratory for dishes that still define restaurant menus: the Delmonico steak that became the New York strip, Delmonico potatoes, Lobster Newberg, and the dessert now called Baked Alaska. The restaurant grew into a national symbol of wealth, powerful enough to damage a presidential campaign, before Prohibition closed the family's last location in 1923. Then came a speakeasy, a second golden age under Oscar Tucci, and a string of closings and revivals.

• For an 1860 supper honoring the Prince of Wales, Delmonico's built sculptures of spun sugar, pastry, and marzipan depicting Queen Victoria, Prince Albert, and the ship Great Eastern.
• Ranhofer called his ice cream and meringue dessert the Alaska Florida. The air bubbles in the meringue insulate the ice cream while the outside browns in a hot oven.
• Days before the 1884 election, James G. Blaine dined at Delmonico's with millionaire backers. Democrats circulated the all French menu, and he lost New York to Grover Cleveland by fewer than 1,000 votes.
• Oscar Tucci bought the Beaver Street property in 1926, ran a speakeasy in the basement, and secured the third liquor license issued in New York City after repeal in 1933.
• Shuttered for three years after the 2020 pandemic amid legal disputes, the restaurant reopened at 56 Beaver Street on September 18, 2023.

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode!

Counterfeiting is often called the world's second oldest profession, and this episode traces it from Lydia around 600 BC, where plated fakes appeared almost as soon as coins did, to the security features in a modern wallet. Early forgers clipped the edges of coins or shook them in leather bags to collect gold dust. Rulers answered with savage penalties: decapitation in China, burning at the stake in Florence, and in 1690 England the execution of Thomas and Anne Rogers for clipping just 40 pieces of silver.

States soon learned to forge each other's money as a weapon. Frederick the Great flooded Poland with fake coins, the British pushed counterfeit Continental dollars during the American Revolution, and the Nazis forced Jewish prisoners at Sachsenhausen to forge British notes in Operation Bernhard. The episode then follows the technological arms race that came after, from Benjamin Franklin's leaf prints to polymer notes, and explains why human politeness at the cash register still lets crude fakes through.

• Artist Jack Daws cast a 1970 penny in solid 18 karat gold, copper plated it, and spent it at the Los Angeles airport in 2007. It surfaced in a Brooklyn grocery store two and a half years later.
• In the 1860s roughly 5,400 kinds of legitimate bills circulated in the United States, and merchants checked them against weekly magazines called banknote reporters.
• In 1925, Alves dos Reis used forged contracts to trick the Bank of Portugal's own printer into producing real notes, injecting nearly 1 percent of the country's nominal GDP.
• Modern photocopiers shut down when they detect the EURion constellation, a pattern of five small circles printed on banknotes.
• Fake Australian notes with a window made of two pieces of taped plastic circulated in Melbourne and Canberra, and Chinese training money with bright pink characters passed in Darwin in 2017.

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode!

The popular story says Black Friday is the day retailers finally move from red ink to black. This episode shows that tale was invented in the early 1980s. The name actually came from police in Philadelphia and Rochester in the 1950s and 60s, who used it for the gridlock, smog, and crowds that hit downtown after Thanksgiving, made worse by the Army-Navy football game. Before that, the phrase marked disasters like the Panic of 1869, when Jay Gould and James Fisk tried to corner the gold market and prices fell 18 percent in a day.

From there the story follows the holiday's constant reinvention. Merchants failed to rebrand it as Big Friday in 1961, so they rewrote its meaning instead. Store hours crept from 6 a.m. to midnight to Thanksgiving evening, until a sales drop and worker walkouts exposed the limits. The idea then crossed borders, changing its name and rules in Mexico, Pakistan, and the Middle East, sparking chaos in British supermarkets, and earning mockery in Brazil, before moving almost entirely onto phones.

• In 1939, Franklin Roosevelt moved Thanksgiving a week earlier under pressure from retailers who wanted a longer Christmas shopping season. Critics called it Franksgiving.
• The 2014 push to open on Thanksgiving Day backfired: overall sales for the holiday weekend fell 11 percent from the year before.
• Mexico created El Buen Fin in 2011, tied to the Mexican Revolution holiday, with credit terms that sometimes ran 18 months interest free.
• Brazilian shoppers nicknamed the event Black Fraud after retailers raised prices in advance, joking that everything was on sale for half of the double.
• The National Retail Federation coined Cyber Monday in 2005 after noticing people shopped from fast office connections. In 2020, online Black Friday sales rose 22 percent to about 9 billion dollars as store traffic fell by roughly half.