When Edouardo Jordan’s Seattle restaurant JuneBaby won the James Beard Award for Best New Restaurant last year, it was the first time that an African American chef had won that particular honor. Edouardo won for a restaurant that reclaims black southern food and proclaims its history. But he had spent years overlooking his culinary roots as he trained in high-end kitchens. It was a path he started down when, as a lowly cook in Tampa, Florida, he talked himself into a job at the famed restaurant The French Laundry.

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Dave Morin’s love for the internet began when he was a geeky kid in Montana. By his early 20s, it had led him to Apple and then to Facebook, where he became employee number 29. He helped the company innovate, pursuing a deeply-held mission: letting people be themselves and share their lives on the internet. But when Facebook began to shift, deprioritizing user privacy, Dave left the company. And he tried to create his own social media utopia. 

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Anna Chlumsky became famous virtually overnight at the age of 10, when she starred in the 1991 hit My Girl opposite Macaulay Culkin. And then, a few years later, she disappeared. She left acting completely and decided to become something else: an utterly normal college student, who set off on an utterly normal career. Anna tells Alex about that time in her life, about her eventual return to acting, and about playing Amy Brookheimer on the HBO show Veep. She’s earned five Emmy nominations in that role. 

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In the days after September 11, 2001, Kenneth Feinberg took on an unenviable task. Congress had created the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund, and it was his job to figure out who should receive money and how much they should get. But much of his time was spent doing something else: listening to people’s stories. Nearly two decades later, he’s still the person we turn to in the wake of our worst catastrophes.

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Today, we bring you an episode of Gimlet's new show launched in collaboration with The Cut from New York Magazine. 

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Paul Holes was starting out in the field of criminology when, one day in 1994, he spotted a filing cabinet in the library of the crime lab where he was working. He opened a drawer, pulled out some files, and discovered the cold case that he would spend his entire career trying to solve. He did it through a trial and error process that involved old-fashioned detective work, new technology, and countless wrong turns before he finally found himself at the Golden State Killer’s front door. 

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In 1998, Patty McCord joined a new company called Netflix. Her title was chief talent officer. And over the next ten years as Netflix grew (and grew), she and CEO Reed Hastings built a new kind of workplace. They threw out all the usual rules -- no more expense authorization forms or vacation requests -- and focused on creating a culture of excellence. But that culture of excellence didn’t come only through hiring the right people. Patty had to get good at firing, too. 

See the original Netflix culture deck here: https://www.slideshare.net/reed2001/culture-1798664

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During the dot-com bubble, Henry Blodget was making millions of dollars as a top analyst on Wall Street. But when that bubble burst, his fortunes changed. He became the public face of a Wall Street corruption investigation that ended with the SEC banning him from the securities industry — for life. Henry tells Alex about the supreme shame of that moment, and about how he eventually started over by founding a new venture, Business Insider.

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For many businesses, it’s all about looking forward. New trends, new brands, new verticals. But Sharon Price John sees a different path: one that involves looking to the past. She has made a career of reinvigorating forgotten and failing brands, including Nerf, Stride Rite, and Barbie Fashions. But her career hasn’t been all success all the time. Alex talks to Sharon about a bet she made that went very wrong, and about her biggest turnaround yet, as the CEO and President of Build-a-Bear Workshop.

Without Fail is hosted by Alex Blumberg. It is produced by Molly Messick and Sarah Platt and edited by Alex Blumberg and Devon Taylor. 

Peter Leonard and Bobby Lord mixed the episode. Theme and ad music by Bobby Lord.

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Before 1970, the most popular radio stations in the U.S were run by white people. But that all changed when Percy Sutton helped to form Inner City Broadcasting with the mission of putting black programming in the hands of black people. Together he and his son Pierre—and later Pierre’s daughter, Keisha—built a radio empire. But it was about more than just entertaining listeners; together they changed the culture and radically influenced how radio stations and record labels treated black artists. Alex talks with Pierre and Keisha about the unlikely rise—and heartbreaking fall—of their family business. 

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