Business History

Jacob Goldstein and Robert Smith talk with Adrian Wooldridge, co-author of The Company: A Short History of a Revolutionary Idea.
Companies are some of the most powerful institutions in the modern world – right up there with the nation-state. Where did the modern corporation come from? And what do AI and Chinese state-owned firms mean for the future of the company?
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In the late 1800s, a Russian immigrant named Samuel Zemurray spent nearly everything he had on a load of bananas, and turned it into a fortune. But Sam the Banana Man wasn’t just a business titan. He was a puppeteer on the geopolitical stage, bankrolling a revolution in Honduras and pushing the CIA to overthrow Guatemala’s democratically elected leader.
For decades, Zemurray battled the United Fruit Company, an institution with its tentacles in governments across the Americas — including the United States. In the end, he wound up running the company.
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We're here with a preview of Blockers, a new audiobook from Michael Lewis, the author of Liars Poker, Moneyball, The Big Short and more. In Blockers, Lewis tells the story of a handful of people who dedicated their careers to public service—until the Department of Government Efficiency decided they were a problem. These were people who believed they had a calling—people who kept American's sensitive tax data out of the wrong hands, made sure that politicians and civil servants played by the rules, and figured out how to stop wildfires from destroying suburban neighborhoods—and then discovered they were no longer wanted.
Here's an excerpt from the audiobook. You can buy the audiobook exclusively at blockers.fm.
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Business History is off this week, so we wanted to keep you entertained with a rerun, in case you missed our Beetle episode the first time around. (You can help us win a Signal Award for this episode by voting here.)
The VW Beetle was the biggest selling car of all time - and it found particular favor with people like hippies and surfers. But this icon of the 60s counterculture had its roots in Nazism. The Volkswagen - the People's Car - was an obsession of Adolf Hitler. He wanted to transform Germany into a land of drivers - and needed an affordable, but reliable automobile.
Germany's private auto manufacturers knew the project was doomed to failure. So Hitler assembled a team of designers and factory managers to enact his vision - even if that meant enslaving workers and committing murder.
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Wayne Huizenga came from a long line of trash collectors. It was a rough, fragmented, mom-and-pops business which notoriously attracted mobsters. But Huizenga set out to buy his small competitors - to roll them up - to form the biggest waste management firm in the world.
Huizenga bought up rival companies at a furious pace - several per week - and when he tired of the trash business he looked for something new. In the 80s, video stores also tended to be mom 'n pops outfits. Huizenga spotted that there was a golden opportunity to consolidate the rental industry, so used roll ups to build the giant Blockbuster Video chain.
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