Business History

It's 1945. The Volkswagen factory has been bombed and members of the staff have been arrested as war criminals. So how did the company turn around in just a few years and begin making Beetle cars that became a global sensation?
Big political and economic moves helped - but a British Army officer, Walt Disney and a New York ad agency also played pivotal roles in turning a car that Hitler had championed into the favourite ride of surfers, school teachers and hippies.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Jim Simons loved cigarettes and math. He started out as an academic mathematician and a Cold War code breaker - but decided to use his skills to write computer programs to spot investment opportunities in the financial markets.
Simons and his fierce nerds bought up all the data sets they could find - reports, books, magnetic tapes - and built machine learning algorithms to hunt for tiny market discrepancies they could exploit. The investment funds Simons started made extraordinary profits - so is this the end for human emotions in financial trading?
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Today, we're sharing an episode of a show that loves asking questions just as much as we do. It's called Part-Time Genius and it's hosted by fellow knowledge junkies, Will Pearson and Mangesh Hattikudur. The episode you're about to hear delves into the surprising origins of 9 wintertime inventions. Did a 15-year-old really invent the snowmobile? What was the original use for a Kleenex? How come Eddie Bauer gets zero credit for his genius idea? And what's so special about Greenwood Champion Ear Protectors, anyway? Every inventor they spotlight was trying to solve a longstanding problem, and because of the solutions they came up with, the winter season is that much more comfortable, navigable, and delicious. Find Part-Time Genius wherever you get podcasts.
Follow them on Instagram @parttimegenius and Bluesky @parttimegenius.bsky.social!

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Young Warren Buffett became rich in anonymity - but in the 1980s he became a global star. During the excesses of 1980s Wall Street the middle-aged investor was reluctantly drawn into the spotlight to save troubled companies. And then came tech - which suited Buffett's style even less.
Warren Buffett couldn't even use a computer - but everyone was telling him to buy tech stocks. How did Buffett navigate the dot com bubble when he'd never surfed the internet? And what will his company Berkshire Hathaway do in the era of AI as Buffett steps away?
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.