Every day of the year has a story where business reshaped the world. And each day, host Ron Trucks takes you through that story - part history lesson, part trivia fun - in less time than it takes to order your Starbucks. And on Fridays? We cut loose with bsnsBloopers: the missteps, meltdowns, and epic fails that prove business doesn’t always go according to plan.
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Nov 13, 2026 · 13:52
***This bsnsBloopers episode originally aired on February 27, 2026. Kodak was once one of the most recognizable names in photography, with a business built around cameras, film,…
Nov 12, 2026 · 10:58
On November 16, 1821, William Becknell and four companions from Franklin, Missouri, rode into Santa Fe with a small load of trade goods and opened the first legal trade between…
Nov 11, 2026 · 10:50
On November 11, 2009, Alibaba's Taobao Mall ran a 24-hour, 50-percent-off sale with just 27 merchants and brought in about 52 million yuan, or roughly $7.5 million. The date…
Nov 10, 2026 · 10:51
On November 10, 1969, Sesame Street premiered on public television stations across the United States. The idea started with Lloyd Morrisett, a psychologist and vice president at…
Nov 9, 2026 · 11:24
On the evening of November 9, 1965, a single protective relay at the Sir Adam Beck Hydroelectric Power Station Number 2 in Queenston, Ontario, near Niagara Falls, tripped and set…
Nov 6, 2026 · 11:49
***This bsnsBloopers episode originally aired on January 30, 2026. Electrolux, the Swedish appliance manufacturer, became associated with one of advertising's most memorable…
Nov 5, 2026 · 10:46
On November 5, 1994, 45-year-old George Foreman knocked out undefeated champion Michael Moorer in the 10th round at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, becoming the oldest heavyweight…
Nov 4, 2026 · 10:40
On November 4, 2011, the daily deals company Groupon began trading on the Nasdaq. Its shares opened 40 percent above their $20 offering price and closed up 31 percent, valuing…
Nov 3, 2026 · 9:41
On November 3, 1914, Mary Phelps Jacob, a 23-year-old New York socialite known as Polly, received a United States patent for her Backless Brassiere. The idea started years…
Nov 2, 2026 · 10:38
On the evening of November 2, 1988, Robert Tappan Morris, a 23-year-old computer science graduate student at Cornell University, released a self-copying program onto the early…
Oct 30, 2026 · 12:11
You've heard about Yahoo passing on Google. This is the mistake that actually cost them everything. On February 1, 2008, Microsoft made an unsolicited $44.6 billion offer to…
Oct 29, 2026 · 11:25
For a full year before the stock market crashed, the one man at the Federal Reserve who actually knew how to stop a panic wasn't there to do it. On October 29, 1929, now…
Oct 28, 2026 · 11:04
Every time you hear the word credentialed, licensed, or certified, you're looking at a trade that started nearly five centuries ago. On October 28, 1538, Pope Paul III issued a…
Oct 27, 2026 · 12:25
A drawing did what financial records alone couldn't. On October 27, 1871, officers arrested William "Boss" Tweed, the head of New York's Tammany Hall political machine, on…
Oct 26, 2026 · 10:49
For decades, a company could fill a file on you with rumors, gossip, and outright fabrications, and you'd never know it existed until you were denied a loan, a job, or an…
Oct 23, 2026 · 13:12
Some collapses take everyone by surprise. This one had a paper trail years in the making. On January 15, 1990, Federated Department Stores and Allied Stores, the parent companies…
Oct 22, 2026 · 11:22
A ten-by-ten-foot burger stand in Baldwin Park, California opened its speaker box for the first time on October 22, 1948, and the discipline behind it outlasted five different…
Oct 21, 2026 · 12:03
A tree marked for removal at a Minnesota research station and an abandoned London market that hadn't sold fruit in sixteen years both proved the same unlikely lesson about…
Oct 20, 2026 · 11:32
An engineer sitting on a Florida beach in 1948 dragged his fingers through the sand and sketched an idea nobody would know what to do with for twenty five years. On October 20,…
Oct 19, 2026 · 10:55
A federal judge's ruling forced the largest employer in America to change a policy it had defended for seventeen years, and someone walked through the door before the day was…
Oct 16, 2026 · 12:19
Everyone knows how this story is supposed to end. This time, it doesn't. Blockbuster CEO John Antioco eliminated the company's unpopular late fees in 2004 and launched Total…
Oct 15, 2026 · 11:33
Two brothers with no scientific training turned a chimney fire observation into the most talked-about spectacle in France. On October 15, 1783, in the garden of a Paris wallpaper…
Oct 14, 2026 · 10:59
Nine of America's most powerful bank CEOs walked into a Treasury Department conference room on October 13, 2008, believing they still had a choice. Treasury Secretary Hank…
Oct 13, 2026 · 11:33
Sailors had been able to calculate their position at sea for well over a century by the time the world finally agreed on where longitude should start counting from. On October…
Oct 12, 2026 · 11:27
A brand-new king's son threw open his wedding to an entire city, and the gesture never really stopped. On October 12, 1810, Crown Prince Ludwig of Bavaria married Princess…
Oct 9, 2026 · 11:05
Some recoveries don't look anything like the crisis that caused them. In early 2006, a leaking pipe at Cadbury's Marlbrook plant in Herefordshire, England, allowed a rare strain…
Oct 8, 2026 · 10:35
A four a.m. phone call from a sportswriter was how Curt Flood learned he'd been traded, and his refusal to accept it eventually rewrote the economics of professional sports. On…
Oct 7, 2026 · 11:40
Everyone knows Ford doubled wages to five dollars a day. Almost nobody knows what it actually took to keep the full amount. On October 7, 1913, Ford's Highland Park plant began…
Oct 6, 2026 · 10:52
Warner Bros. was still the smaller studio chasing Paramount and MGM when it bet its future on a sound technology called Vitaphone, and the brother who pushed hardest for that bet…
Oct 5, 2026 · 11:08
A Washington courtroom forced the largest company in the world to break itself into pieces, and one of the smallest pieces eventually bought the parent back. On October 5, 1983,…
Oct 2, 2026 · 12:04
Some companies collapse over years. This one started collapsing in the middle of a laugh. On April 23, 1991, Gerald Ratner, CEO of the world's largest jewellery retailer, told a…
Oct 1, 2026 · 10:23
Coffee is one of the most valuable traded commodities on earth, and for most of its modern history, almost none of that value made it back to the people growing it. On October 1,…
Sep 30, 2026 · 10:32
A sheet metal shop that started out making window frames in Oakland, California ended up building more than 600,000 of the phone booths that once lined nearly every American…
Sep 29, 2026 · 10:25
(Content note: this episode discusses a historical event involving the death of a child and other family members.) A 12-year-old girl took one Tylenol capsule for a sore throat.…
Sep 28, 2026 · 9:58
Alexander Fleming almost threw the dish away. On September 28, 1928, the London bacteriologist returned from a two week vacation to find a stray mold had wiped out the staph…
Sep 25, 2026 · 12:46
Some inventions fail loudly. This one just quietly disappeared into tour groups and mall cops. On December 3, 2001, inventor Dean Kamen unveiled the Segway on Good Morning…
Sep 24, 2026 · 9:33
Retired Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler had already turned down a bond salesman's strange proposals more than once by the time the man showed up at his hotel room with…
Sep 23, 2026 · 10:51
Minutes before he walked on set, his own party's staff told him it wouldn't matter how well he did. He went on television anyway. On September 23, 1952, at 6:30 p.m. Pacific…
Sep 22, 2026 · 10:00
Some of the most lasting institutions start with the smallest possible meeting. On September 22, 1949, Kansas City businessman Hilary Bufton Jr. sat down in a downtown coffee…
Sep 21, 2026 · 12:16
A financial gamble that nearly cost a company its independence ended up producing one of the most enduring aircraft in aviation history. On September 21, 1961, the helicopter…
Sep 18, 2026 · 12:56
Some empires don't collapse from a bad product. They collapse from a rule nobody read closely enough. Through the late 1980s and early 1990s, Ray Loewen built The Loewen Group…
Sep 17, 2026 · 10:05
NASA wanted to name its first space shuttle Constitution. A woman who'd already saved a canceled TV show with 116,000 letters got a phone call asking her to do it again. On…
Sep 16, 2026 · 10:06
A man who once said he wouldn't give a hundred dollars for every car in the country ended up building the company that would define the automobile industry for the next century.…
Sep 15, 2026 · 10:16
Seven months after losing his title in one of boxing's biggest upsets, Muhammad Ali stepped back into the ring against the man who beat him, and the broadcast deal built around…
Sep 14, 2026 · 10:29
A diplomat's personal irritation with mismatched dates on his own letters ended up rewriting an entire nation's calendar. On September 14, 1752, Britain completed its switch from…
Sep 11, 2026 · 14:09
Some product launches fail quietly. This one sent people into the desert. On September 19, 2012, Apple released iOS 6, replacing Google Maps with its own mapping app across every…
Sep 10, 2026 · 11:10
Fourteen years before the city opened its own subway, a company's decision to keep trains running during a labor strike led to the deadliest crash in New York City subway…
Sep 9, 2026 · 10:42
Everybody knows the story: Grace Hopper found a moth in a computer, taped it into a logbook, and invented the word "bug." On September 9, 1947, engineers working on Harvard's…
Sep 8, 2026 · 9:58
It started with a napkin, a dinner date, and a stubborn film critic who wouldn't let a good deal slide. On September 8, 1986, The Oprah Winfrey Show launched in national…
Sep 7, 2026 · 10:15
Armed robbers demanded he open the safe. He told them it was locked. It wasn't, and that lie cost him his life. On September 7, 1876, the James-Younger Gang attempted to rob the…
Sep 4, 2026 · 16:06
There are brands built around a product. And then there are brands built around a feeling. Krispy Kreme was always the second kind. On April 5, 2000, Krispy Kreme Doughnuts went…
Sep 3, 2026 · 10:12
Swedish voters rejected this idea outright, 83% against. Twelve years later, the government did it anyway, in a single morning. On September 3, 1967, Sweden executed Dagen H,…
Sep 2, 2026 · 9:59
A frustrated executive stood in a slow-moving bank line in Texas and imagined a machine that could do the job instead. It took 26 years to officially settle who actually deserved…
Sep 1, 2026 · 11:34
Alexander Hamilton stood before New York's legislature and passionately defended a plan to save a grieving city. He had no idea what was actually hiding inside it. On September…
Aug 31, 2026 · 11:23
(Content note: this episode discusses a historical case involving violent murder.) A ten-year-old detective department, still recovering from its own corruption scandal, was…
Aug 28, 2026 · 15:00
Some business mistakes happen fast. This one took about fifty years to finish playing out. On June 27, 2026, Wisconsin Brewing Company in Verona, Wisconsin sold the last Schlitz…
Aug 27, 2026 · 11:30
He'd never managed a band before. He built the entire commercial machine behind the biggest one in the world anyway. Brian Epstein discovered the Beatles at Liverpool's Cavern…
Aug 26, 2026 · 12:56
(Content note: this episode discusses a historical natural disaster with significant loss of life.) A volcano in the middle of one of the busiest shipping lanes on earth produced…
Aug 25, 2026 · 11:43
A man who'd just lost nearly everything spent a year alone in a backyard shed solving a problem nobody else had managed to crack. On August 25, 1958, in Ikeda, Osaka, Japan,…
Aug 24, 2026 · 12:21
Those startup sounds probably still mean something to you. Here's the story of the day they first played for the world. On August 24, 1995, Microsoft launched Windows 95 with a…
Aug 21, 2026 · 14:52
Not every business failure is about a bad idea. Sometimes the idea is exactly right, and everything else is wrong. On May 18, 2000, boo.com shut down at midnight after investors…
Aug 20, 2026 · 10:06
Four broke football teams met in a car dealership to stop themselves from competing each other into bankruptcy. A month later, the car brand hosting it all didn't survive nearly…
Aug 19, 2026 · 11:47
A woman built one of the largest fortunes in Gold Rush-era California, and almost nobody around her realized it was happening. Born around August 19, 1814, in a story she herself…
Aug 18, 2026 · 10:47
A wheel with no memory convinced an entire room it owed them something, and it cost them millions to find out otherwise. On the evening of August 18, 1913, a roulette wheel at…
Aug 17, 2026 · 11:51
Four men set out to fund a recording studio. What they actually built was a financial disaster that became one of the most famous events in American history. Woodstock ran from…
Aug 14, 2026 · 16:00
Sometimes the product works exactly as advertised, and that is precisely the problem. On January 24, 1996, the FDA approved olestra (oh-LES-trah), a synthetic fat substitute…
Aug 13, 2026 · 15:13
A phrase gets repeated every election cycle that almost nobody can actually define. This episode traces it back to where it started. On August 13, 1981, President Ronald Reagan…
Aug 12, 2026 · 13:04
A broke mechanic built a better machine in eleven days. It took his lawyer five more years to figure out how anyone could actually buy one. On August 12, 1851, Isaac Singer was…
Aug 11, 2026 · 13:10
The world called her the most beautiful woman alive. It took fifty-five years for anyone to call her an inventor. On August 11, 1942, actress Hedy Lamarr and composer George…
Aug 10, 2026 · 14:01
A man who was never allowed to use his own father's name decided, quietly and without explanation, exactly whose name would be remembered instead. On August 10, 1846, President…
Aug 7, 2026 · 15:07
There are product failures, and then there are founder failures. This week's bsnsBloopers has both. On November 5, 2013, Lululemon founder Chip Wilson sat down for a live…
Aug 6, 2026 · 10:34
Two words almost didn't make it into a routine reply on an internet newsgroup, and the internet as we know it might not exist without them. On August 6, 1991, physicist Tim…
Aug 5, 2026 · 10:48
Four failed attempts and a near bankruptcy didn't stop him. A fifth try, and one soaked, sleepless night, finally did the job. On August 4, 1858, the Niagara reached Trinity Bay,…
Aug 4, 2026 · 11:44
A signature that didn't stamp anything "rejected" turned out to matter more than most people realized at the time. On June 19, 1987, President Reagan vetoed a bill that would…
Aug 3, 2026 · 12:02
A town got its name by accident in 1856, and it took almost ninety years before anyone realized what that name was actually worth. On August 3, 1946, retired industrialist Louis…
Jul 31, 2026 · 18:55
Some business failures are about bad ideas. This one is about a great idea that took thirteen years to build while the world it was designed for disappeared around it. On…
Jul 30, 2026 · 11:28
The Virginia Company of London did not create the first elected legislature in the Americas out of idealism. They created it because colonists kept dying and leaving, and they…
Jul 29, 2026 · 11:40
When Donald Wollheim called J.R.R. Tolkien in 1964 to ask permission to publish a paperback edition of The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien told him he would never allow his great work…
Jul 28, 2026 · 11:37
At any hour of the day or night during the mid-1970s, the Fairbanks McDonald's was packed with exhausted pipeline workers who had turned it into the second busiest location in…
Jul 27, 2026 · 11:05
In 1930, Warner Bros. contracted with Leon Schlesinger to produce animated shorts for one reason: Walt Disney was making money with Mickey Mouse, and Warner Bros. wanted the same…
Jul 24, 2026 · 10:29
This is Part 2 of a two-part episode. If you haven't heard Thursday's episode, start there. When Grant and Ward collapsed in May 1884, Ulysses S. Grant was left with roughly $210…
Jul 23, 2026 · 11:25
This is Part 1 of a two-part episode. Part 2 airs July 24. On July 23, 1885, Ulysses S. Grant died in a borrowed cottage at Mount McGregor, New York, at the age of sixty-three.…
Jul 22, 2026 · 10:29
In the summer of 2005, a nature documentary about emperor penguins quietly opened on a handful of art house screens and proceeded to rewrite the business model for documentary…
Jul 21, 2026 · 11:56
Davis Tutt thought he had the leverage. On July 21, 1865, the former Confederate soldier walked into the town square of Springfield, Missouri, wearing a gold pocket watch that…
Jul 20, 2026 · 12:03
Sometimes the most important business lesson inside a historic moment isn't the achievement itself - it's what happens the morning after. On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong became…
Jul 17, 2026 · 15:00
Sometimes the idea is right and everything else is wrong. On April 6, 2020, Quibi launched as the most well-funded streaming debut in history, backed by $1.75 billion from…
Jul 16, 2026 · 11:39
The parking problem in downtown Oklahoma City in the early 1930s was not what anyone thought it was. On July 16, 1935, Carl Magee's solution went into the ground: 175…
Jul 15, 2026 · 11:55
Few objects in history have done more business work than a broken slab of rock pulled from a demolition site. On July 15, 1799, French engineer Pierre-François Bouchard uncovered…
Jul 14, 2026 · 11:58
The First Amendment was seven years old when Congress contradicted it. On July 14, 1798, a Federalist-controlled Congress passed the Sedition Act, making it a federal crime to…
Jul 13, 2026 · 12:15
Nobody in Montevideo in 1930 was building a $7 billion media property. They were just trying to get thirteen teams to show up. On July 13, 1930, the first two matches in FIFA…
Jul 10, 2026 · 16:06
Not every business failure is the story of a bad idea. Sometimes it's the story of a great idea that got used against its own inventor. On February 5, 1982, Laker Airways, the…
Jul 9, 2026 · 12:19
Not every turning point looks like one at the time. On July 9, 1962, a largely unknown artist named Andy Warhol opened his first solo painting exhibition at the Ferus Gallery in…
Jul 8, 2026 · 14:02
Some turning points arrive as negotiations. This one arrived as four warships. On July 8, 1853, U.S. Navy Commodore Matthew Perry sailed into Edo Bay in Japan, deliberately…
Jul 7, 2026 · 12:29
Some turning points arrive with fanfare. This one arrived with a confirmation vote of 99 to nothing. On July 7, 1981, President Ronald Reagan nominated Sandra Day O'Connor to the…
Jul 6, 2026 · 14:21
Before television and the internet, the circus coming to town was one of the biggest live events a community would see all year. On July 6, 1944, roughly seven thousand people…
Jul 3, 2026 · 21:30
Some business mistakes are famous. This one is famous and still unresolved forty years later. On April 23, 1985, The Coca-Cola Company announced it was replacing its 99-year-old…
Jul 2, 2026 · 13:36
Some business ideas get rejected because they are bad. Some get rejected because the people doing the rejecting cannot see past the model they are already running. On July 2,…
Jul 1, 2026 · 15:29
It started as a solution to a mail sorting crisis and became one of the most widely used data points in American commerce. On July 1, 1963, the United States Post Office…
Jun 30, 2026 · 15:56
Show Notes: On June 30, 1892, Carnegie Steel locked out its workers at the Homestead Steel Works before their contract had even expired. Six days later, three hundred Pinkerton…
Jun 29, 2026 · 14:09
On June 29, 2007, Apple released the first iPhone to people who had been camping outside stores for days. Nokia controlled 51 percent of the global phone market. BlackBerry's…
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