pplpod

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

President Woodrow Wilson signed the Federal Trade Commission into law in 1914, after the 1911 Standard Oil case showed courts alone moved too slowly against monopolies. The agency enforces civil antitrust law and consumer protection through five commissioners serving seven-year terms, with no more than three from one party. Section 5 of the FTC Act lets it declare unfair methods of competition and deceptive acts unlawful. Its consumer work runs from the 1984 Funeral Rule, which requires written price lists, to a consent decree over Sears software that collected users' online activity, a $50.1 million judgment against OMICS Publishing Group, and a click-to-cancel rule that a federal appeals court vacated in July 2025.

On competition, the FTC has challenged hospital mergers including Phoebe Putney and Palmyra Medical Center, sued Meta over Instagram and WhatsApp, blocked Nvidia's purchase of Arm, and won an injunction against the $24.6 billion Kroger and Albertsons merger. It is suing the three largest pharmacy benefit managers, which handle about 80% of U.S. prescriptions, over rebates tied to insulin prices. A Texas federal court struck down its ban on noncompete clauses. In 2025 President Trump removed commissioners Alvaro Bedoya and Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, and in June 2026 the Supreme Court ruled in Trump v. Slaughter that commissioners can be fired at the president's discretion, overturning the Humphrey's Executor precedent.

• OMICS ran predatory journals, advertised conferences with speakers who never agreed to attend, and refused to let researchers withdraw papers.
• The three PBMs named are OptumRx, Express Scripts and CVS Caremark.
• In the Google search case, a judge first ordered a Chrome sale, then instead required data sharing and an end to exclusivity deals.
• The FTC backed a copyright exemption letting independent shops repair McDonald's ice cream machines.
• After the ruling, the FTC warned PayPal, Visa and Mastercard against denying service over political or religious activity.

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

On March 23, 2021 the Ever Given, a 224,000-ton ship that can carry about 20,000 containers, was fifth in a northbound convoy through a single-lane stretch of the Suez Canal. It had transited the canal 22 times before. A sandstorm brought winds over 40 knots that pushed against its stacked containers, and the bank effect, a low-pressure zone created as displaced water rushes between hull and bank, pulled the stern toward one side. With two Suez Canal Authority pilots directing the maneuvers, the bow lodged in the eastern bank and the stern in the western bank, blocking roughly 12% of global trade. Between 300 and 400 ships queued, holding about $9.6 billion in goods a day, while the canal lost about $15 million a day in fees.

Royal Boskalis and its subsidiary Smit Salvage led the effort, rejecting container removal as a risk to the hull and instead removing 9,000 tons of ballast and dredging 30,000 cubic meters of sand. The seagoing tugs Alp Guard, with 285 tons of bollard pull, and Carlo Magno joined harbor tugs, and on March 29 a supermoon king tide helped free the ship. One person died during the six-day salvage. Egypt impounded the vessel on April 13 and demanded $1 billion, including $300 million for loss of reputation, while the 25 Indian crew members stayed aboard. A $540 million settlement in July included a new tugboat for Egypt, and the ship left on July 7.

• The cargo queue included 41 bulk carriers, 24 crude oil tankers, a Russian Navy corvette and more than 130,000 Romanian sheep.
• Europe saw a documented shortage of garden gnomes because shipments were stuck behind the ship.
• Ships rerouting around the Cape of Good Hope coordinated with the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet over piracy, and Russia promoted its Northern Sea Route.
• Under general average, cargo owners can be required to share salvage costs, as with a 54% bond after the 2018 Maersk Honam fire.
• The ship was owned by Japan's Shoei Kisen Kaisha, flagged in Panama, operated by Taiwan's Evergreen Marine and managed by a German firm.

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

The Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 outlawed agreements in restraint of trade, but courts used it against labor unions, treating strikes as illegal combinations. It also invited mergers, because companies that fused into one entity no longer had an agreement to police, and the largest merger wave in U.S. history followed. In 1914 Alabama Democrat Henry De Lamar Clayton Jr. introduced the Clayton Antitrust Act, which let the government stop anticompetitive conduct in its incipiency rather than after a monopoly formed. It targeted predatory price discrimination, tying and exclusive dealing, mergers that substantially lessen competition, and interlocking directorates, where one person sits on the boards of competing companies.

Section 7 first covered holding companies that bought rivals' stock. The 1950 Celler-Kefauver Amendment extended it to asset purchases, and the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act added pre-merger notification for deals above thresholds updated annually. Regulators measure concentration with the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index, which squares and sums each firm's market share. Section 6 declared that human labor is not a commodity or article of commerce, exempting unions and farm groups from antitrust law, and AFL leader Samuel Gompers called the act Labor's Magna Carta. Private parties can sue for treble damages plus attorney's fees, and courts can order divestiture.

• Ten firms with 10% each produce an HHI of 1,000, while one firm with 90% alone scores 8,100.
• Tying is often judged illegal per se, as affirmed in the Jefferson Parish Hospital case.
• Exclusive dealing falls under the rule of reason, so plaintiffs must prove harm to the whole market.
• Federal injunctions in labor disputes were limited to cases threatening irreparable property damage.
• The 1922 Federal Baseball Club v. National League ruling exempted Major League Baseball from federal antitrust law.

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

When the first Project 971 attack submarine was launched in 1985, Western intelligence believed the Soviet Union was a decade away from that level of quiet. NATO called it the Akula, Russian for shark, though the Soviets called the project Shchuka-B and used Akula for the boats NATO named Typhoon. The design wraps a titanium or high-yield steel pressure hull inside a lighter outer hull shaped for flow, giving it large ballast tanks and extra reserve buoyancy. A teardrop pod atop the rudder holds a towed sonar array, and the boats carry four 533mm and four 650mm tubes. The SOKS system uses hull sensors to detect the warm water and salinity changes left in another submarine's wake.

Much of the quiet came from the Toshiba-Kongsberg scandal: in 1983 and 1984 Toshiba Machine illegally sold four nine-axis milling machines to the Soviet Union, run by Norwegian Kongsberg controls, allowing propellers that avoid cavitation. U.S. officials estimated countering the result cost $30 billion. The Akula II Vepr, commissioned in 1995, was quieter than improved Los Angeles class boats, and the only Akula III, Gepard, was commissioned in 2001 with Vladimir Putin present, a year after the Kursk sank. In 1996 the Tigr tracked a U.S. Ohio class submarine on patrol, two Akulas operated off the U.S. East Coast in 2009, and in 2012 one was reported in the Gulf of Mexico for over a month.

• In 2008 a halon fire system misfired on the Nerpa during trials in the Sea of Japan, killing 20 people, 17 of them civilian technicians.
• India commissioned the repaired Nerpa as INS Chakra in 2012 under a lease.
• Missile Technology Control Regime limits capped Chakra's Club-S missiles at 300 km, versus about 3,000 km for Russian land attack missiles.
• After the 2019 Balakot strikes, India sent Chakra to hunt the Pakistani submarine PNS Saad.
• Chakra returned to Russia a year early in June 2021 over reactor maintenance, and a $3 billion follow-on lease slipped to at least 2028.

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

Brothers John, Paul and William Amos founded the American Family Life Insurance Company of Columbus in Georgia in November 1955 and signed 6,426 policyholders in the first year. In 1958 they pioneered cancer insurance, a supplemental product that pays cash directly to the policyholder rather than to hospitals. In 1964 they began selling through employers with payroll deductions, which made premiums nearly invisible to buyers. The company now says it covers more than 50 million people and is the largest insurer in Japan by individual policies in force, with over 19,000 sales agencies there and nearly 77,000 licensed associates in the U.S.

A General Accounting Office study found cancer policies paid back as little as 35% of premiums, while Aflac said its policies paid 62.4%, against New York's 82% requirement for most major medical coverage. New York banned standalone cancer policies, Aflac spent $175,000 on lobbying and contributions in 1997, and the state lifted the ban in 1998 for buyers with basic coverage. In December 1999 the Kaplan Thaler Group created the duck after an art director, muttering the name in Central Park, noticed it sounded like a quack. Gilbert Gottfried voiced the duck until March 14, 2011, when Aflac fired him over jokes about the Japanese earthquake and tsunami. A public talent search picked Daniel McKeague, a sales manager from Hugo, Minnesota.

• Consumer Reports advised buyers to skip supplemental policies and put the money toward lower-deductible health insurance.
• The first ducks came from Metzer Farms, a hatchery in Gonzales, California.
• NASCAR commentator Benny Parsons introduced trivia by calling out cue the duck on NBC and TNT broadcasts from 2003 to 2006.
• Aflac has given over $100 million to Children's Healthcare of Atlanta for childhood cancer care.
• Holiday plush ducks sold at Macy's since 2001 have raised over $3 million for local children's cancer centers.

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

In May 1978 Bill Rasmussen and his son Scott were fired from the World Hockey Association's New England Whalers. They rented an office in Plainville, Connecticut to plan a sports network, but local zoning banned satellite dishes, so they bought land in Bristol. In February 1979 Getty Oil bought 85% of the company, and Anheuser-Busch committed $1 million in advertising. ESPN launched on September 7, 1979 with SportsCenter, reaching 1.4 million cable subscribers. With little money for major rights, it hired Dick Vitale after his firing by the Detroit Pistons, added Chris Berman, and in April 1980 televised the NFL draft, turning a clipboard meeting into an event.

Getty's frugality cost ESPN NHL and college football rights, until ABC bought the whole company in 1984, followed by Capital Cities in 1985 and Disney in 1996. The 1984 Supreme Court ruling in NCAA v. Board of Regents ended the NCAA's control of football broadcasts, and ESPN filled weekends with college games. In 1987 it began Sunday night NFL games and hired Lee Corso for College GameDay. Carriage fees from cable bundles funded ESPN Radio, ESPN2, the BottomLine ticker and ESPN News, but cord cutting cost about 10 million viewers and led to layoffs in April 2017. In 2024 ESPN returned 37 Emmys after submitting fake names, and a deal finalized in early 2026 gave the NFL a 10% stake in exchange for NFL Network and RedZone.

• ESPN's documentary unit won an Oscar in 2017 for O.J.: Made in America.
• An October 2019 memo told staff to avoid political discussion after Daryl Morey's tweet about China and Hong Kong.
• ESPN Bet launched in late 2023 with Penn Entertainment and shifted to DraftKings in late 2025.
• In September 2026 ESPN removed the BottomLine ticker from college football broadcasts.
• Bill Rasmussen, pushed out after the ABC purchase, died in August 2026 at 93, months after a documentary on ESPN's founding premiered.

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

As a Yale student, Frederick W. Smith wrote a term paper proposing a dedicated air network for overnight delivery, and legend says it earned roughly a C. He founded Federal Express in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1971 and moved operations to Memphis in 1973, choosing it for mild weather and its location near the country's population center, ideal for a hub-and-spoke system where every package flies to one sorting point overnight. The company reached $1 billion in revenue by 1983 without a merger or acquisition. It expanded to Europe and Asia in 1984, bought Flying Tiger Line in 1988 to become the largest full-service cargo airline, and acquired Caliber System, owner of the ground carrier RPS, in 1997.

Customers already said FedEx it, and the company officially adopted the FedEx name in 2000, folding units into brands such as FedEx Ground and FedEx Custom Critical. It bought Kinko's in 2004 and TNT Express in 2015. Smith stepped down as CEO in 2022, handing control to Raj Subramaniam, who launched Network 2.0 to merge express and ground delivery starting in June 2024. FedEx Freight is set to become a separate public company by June 2026. The company also pledged carbon-neutral operations by 2040 with an initial $2 billion investment, including a $100 million grant to Yale for carbon capture research.

• Lindon Leader of Landor Associates designed the 1994 logo with a hidden arrow between the E and the X.
• FedEx paid nothing for product placement in Cast Away, a film that opens with one of its planes crashing.
• In 2007 the IRS challenged how FedEx Ground classified its drivers, floating a tax liability of over $300 million.
• In 2019 FedEx diverted Huawei packages, prompting a Chinese investigation, and later called it an operational error.
• The Justice Department indicted FedEx in 2014 over shipments for illegal online pharmacies and dropped the charges two years later.

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

The company that runs Caesars today began in May 1973, when investors led by Don Carano opened the Eldorado Hotel in Reno. In 1995 the family partnered with Circus Circus on the neighboring Silver Legacy, and in 1996 it reorganized as Eldorado Resorts LLC with a $100 million bond offering. Under CEO Gary Carano, Eldorado completed a reverse merger with the publicly traded racino operator MTR Gaming Group in 2013 and 2014, gaining a listing and properties in Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia. It then bought MGM's half of the Silver Legacy for $73 million, Isle of Capri for $1.7 billion and Tropicana Entertainment for $640 million, with Gaming and Leisure Properties buying the real estate and leasing it back for $88 million a year.

In 2019 Eldorado, with 26 properties, agreed to buy Caesars Entertainment, with 53, for $18 billion, then took the Caesars name. Regulators required asset sales to buyers including Vici Properties, Century Casinos and Twin River, and the deal closed in July 2020 during the pandemic. Caesars bought William Hill for $3.7 billion in 2021, kept the U.S. business and sold the rest to 888 Holdings for $3 billion. In September 2023 the group known as Scattered Spider breached Caesars through an outside IT vendor, and Caesars paid $15 million of a $30 million demand. In September 2025 it dropped out of the S&P 500, and in May 2026 Fertitta Entertainment agreed to a $5.7 billion equity deal while Carl Icahn prepared a rival bid.

• The breach exposed driver's license numbers and possibly Social Security numbers from a rewards database of 65 million members.
• Caesars sold the World Series of Poker brand for $500 million but kept rights to host the main event for 20 years.
• ESPN dropped its Caesars partnership in 2023 to launch ESPN Bet with Penn Entertainment.
• A community advisory board rejected a proposed Caesars Palace in New York's Times Square.
• The Fertitta deal assumed nearly $12 billion in debt, and Icahn's reported counteroffer was $33 per share against $31.

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

In 1980 lawyers filing merger paperwork with the Interstate Commerce Commission combined a C, an S and an X as a temporary name for the union of the Chessie System and the Family Lines, and it was never changed. The roots run to the Baltimore and Ohio in the 1820s. The Chesapeake and Ohio absorbed the B&O and Western Maryland to form the Chessie System, known for its sleeping cat mascot, while the Seaboard Air Line and Atlantic Coast Line formed the Family Lines. CSX did not operate as a single railroad until 1987. In 1996 it bid for Conrail, Norfolk Southern countered, and in 1997 the rivals split Conrail, with CSX taking about 42% and Norfolk Southern 58%, while Conrail Shared Assets kept serving Detroit, Philadelphia and northern New Jersey.

CSX now runs about 21,000 miles of track. In 2017 Hunter Harrison, backed by the hedge fund Mantle Ridge, became CEO and imposed precision scheduled railroading, with fewer, longer trains and deep staff cuts, before dying months later. In August 2025 Ancora Holdings launched a campaign against CEO Joe Hinrichs, citing an operating ratio that rose from 58% to about 67% and a 22% drop in third quarter profit. Management cited a weak coal market, Hurricane Helene damage, a Baltimore tunnel project and a $164 million goodwill impairment. Hinrichs was ousted in September 2025 and replaced by former GE executive Steve Angel, and in December the company disbanded its aviation department.

• The Juice Train hauled Tropicana orange juice from Bradenton, Florida to Jersey City, New Jersey.
• CSX rebuilds 1970s EMD GP38-2 locomotives with Wabtec, adding positive train control and new cabs.
• The 2001 CSX 8888 runaway pulled 47 cars unmanned for more than 60 miles and inspired the film Unstoppable.
• A December 2025 derailment in Todd County, Kentucky released molten sulfur and forced a shelter-in-place in Trenton.
• Since 1995 CSX has banned steam locomotives from its tracks, requiring $200 million in insurance from operators.

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

Federico Faggin and Ralph Ungermann left Intel in 1974, and Masatoshi Shima joined them the next year. Funded by Exxon's computing division, they named the company Zilog, for Z Integrated Logic, with Z meant as the last word in logic. The Z80, released in 1976, ran Intel 8080 code but added a larger instruction set, a built-in DRAM refresh controller and a single 5-volt supply instead of three. It powered the Sinclair ZX Spectrum and Tandy TRS-80, became the base for CP/M and software like WordStar and dBase, and filled arcade cabinets: Pac-Man used one, Scramble two and Galaga three. Sega used it in the Master System and Game Gear and as the Genesis sound processor, and it ran Texas Instruments graphing calculators.

The 16-bit Z8000 of 1979 dropped Z80 compatibility and lost ground to Intel's x86. Ungermann left in 1978, Exxon took full ownership in 1980, and CEO Edgar Sack led a 1989 management and employee buyback, with a public listing in 1991. Texas Pacific Group bought Zilog for $527 million in 1998, CEO Curtis Crawford borrowed to chase 32-bit data communications chips, and the company filed for Chapter 11 in late 2001. Under Jim Thorburn it refocused on embedded microcontrollers, sold its ARM9 line to Maxim and its remote control unit for $31 million, and was bought by IXYS for $62.4 million in 2009. Littelfuse acquired IXYS for $750 million in 2017.

• Zilog marketed the Z8000 with a superhero comic book called Captain Zilog.
• The Commodore 128 and DEC Rainbow 100 carried a Z80 beside their main processor just to run CP/M software.
• The Zilog SCC serial controller became standard in early Apple Macintosh computers and Sun SPARCstations.
• When NXP abandoned 8051 microcontrollers, Zilog released its own 8051 family to pick up stranded customers.
• The original Z80 was discontinued in 2024 after 48 years in continuous production.