Episodi

  • The Paymaster Shortened His Name and Erased a Family’s Identity

    The Paymaster Shortened His Name and Erased a Family’s Identity
    Sep 7 2026
    The Paymaster Shortened His Name and Erased a Family's Identity

    A Greek goat-herder steps off a ship at Ellis Island in 1901 carrying a name that had survived a village, an ocean and three weeks in a cargo hold. A railroad paymaster decides that name is too long to write twice, and issues a new one as a condition, not a courtesy. What grows from that shortened name, across two generations, changes how an entire country extracts energy from the ground beneath it.

    In this episode, we trace the line from an immigrant's forced name change to a Fortune 500 energy company and a forest township built by the same man who cracked open the Barnett Shale, asking how one person can fund a warning about the limits of growth while spending decades pushing past them.

    Person: George Phydias Mitchell
    Location: Galveston, Texas
    Date: 1901
    Case: the renaming of Savvas Paraskevopoulos into Mike Mitchell by a railroad paymaster
    Status: the name endured across generations, eventually placed on a Texas A&M marine campus by the sea

    - Savvas Paraskevopoulos departed Piraeus on February 28, 1901 and arrived at Ellis Island on March 21, 1901 after a crossing that began March 1, 1901
    - George Mitchell graduated valedictorian from Texas A&M in 1940 with a petroleum engineering degree and served as captain of the men's tennis team
    - Mitchell Energy and Development Corporation participated in roughly 10,000 wells, more than 1,000 of them wildcat wells, before its acquisition by Devon Energy
    - The Potential Gas Committee assessed the shale gas breakthrough as unlocking 118 years of U.S. recoverable reserves at then-current production levels
    - The Cynthia and George Mitchell Foundation and the couple personally distributed or pledged more than $900 million in grants, with nearly $100 million going to Texas A&M
    - Cynthia Mitchell died December 27, 2009; the Giving Pledge announcement describing their "long-held private intent" came on December 7, 2010
    - George Mitchell died July 26, 2013, at age 94 in Galveston, survived by 10 children, 23 grandchildren and 5 great-grandchildren

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    © 2026 OBOMEDIA. All rights reserved.
    This episode and its content (audio, text, and related materials) are the exclusive property of OBOMEDIA and are protected by applicable copyright laws. Reproduction, distribution, editing, or commercial use, in whole or in part, without prior written permission from OBOMEDIA is prohibited. For permissions, licensing, and business inquiries: business@obomedia.com.
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    15 min
  • The Turner canvas she bought at record price declared her rule

    The Turner canvas she bought at record price declared her rule
    Sep 7 2026
    The Turner canvas she bought at record price declared her rule

    In 1980, at a Sotheby's auction, an Argentine woman raised her hand and paid six point four million dollars for a single canvas — a world record for any painting ever sold at auction. The country she came from was four years into a military dictatorship, still counting its disappeared. Why would the woman who had just inherited a cement company in the darkest year of Argentina's history choose that exact moment to announce herself through a Turner?

    In this episode, we trace Amalia Lacroze de Fortabat's path from inheriting Loma Negra in 1976 to building a private empire and a public museum, asking what a person does with accumulated power once they can see its edge approaching.

    Person: Amalia Lacroze de Fortabat
    Location: Buenos Aires, Argentina
    Date: 1980
    Case: the record-price purchase of Turner's Juliet and Her Nurse
    Status: the painting now hangs in the Fortabat Art Collection, a free public museum in Puerto Madero

    - She inherited Loma Negra in 1976, the year of the military coup, becoming its nearly sole owner, president, and chairperson in her mid-fifties
    - The Turner purchase of 6.4 million dollars in 1980 set a world record for any painting sold at auction
    - In 1992 she acquired a 65 percent stake in the privatized Ferrosur Roca railway and broke ground on Loma Negra's Catalinas Norte headquarters
    - In 1997 she publicly objected, via a paid newspaper advertisement, to her own foundation's literary prize winner, The Anatomist by Federico Andahazi, while still paying the 15,000-dollar award
    - She sold her 80 percent stake in Loma Negra to Camargo Correa for just over one billion dollars in May 2005, at age 83, and opened the Fortabat Art Collection museum, designed by Rafael Viñoly, in October 2008

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    © 2026 OBOMEDIA. All rights reserved.
    This episode and its content (audio, text, and related materials) are the exclusive property of OBOMEDIA and are protected by applicable copyright laws. Reproduction, distribution, editing, or commercial use, in whole or in part, without prior written permission from OBOMEDIA is prohibited. For permissions, licensing, and business inquiries: business@obomedia.com.
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    17 min
  • They Nationalized Their Bank — How the Rothschilds Rebuilt an Empire

    They Nationalized Their Bank — How the Rothschilds Rebuilt an Empire
    Sep 7 2026
    No description available.

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    © 2026 OBOMEDIA. All rights reserved.
    This episode and its content (audio, text, and related materials) are the exclusive property of OBOMEDIA and are protected by applicable copyright laws. Reproduction, distribution, editing, or commercial use, in whole or in part, without prior written permission from OBOMEDIA is prohibited. For permissions, licensing, and business inquiries: business@obomedia.com.
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    20 min
  • The unsealed envelope that showed a Social Security number to every postal worker

    The unsealed envelope that showed a Social Security number to every postal worker
    Sep 7 2026
    The unsealed envelope that showed a Social Security number to every postal worker

    In December of 2005, an envelope moved through the U.S. postal system with a Social Security number printed on the outside — visible to every carrier and clerk who touched it. The company that sent it had spent fifty years telling Americans it could be trusted with their most sensitive financial details. So how does a company built on that exact promise end up mailing out the one number it was legally bound to protect?

    In this episode, we trace H&R Block from a 1946 bookkeeping shop on Main Street in Kansas City to a sprawling financial services company that overstated its own earnings, mishandled its own state taxes, and settled lawsuits over retirement accounts and refund loans — asking whether a company can keep its founding promise while expanding far beyond the expertise that made it trustworthy in the first place.

    Person: Henry W. Bloch
    Location: Kansas City, Missouri
    Date: December 2005
    Case: a Social Security number printed on the outside of a mailed envelope
    Status: disclosed as affecting less than three percent of mailings, amid a wider pattern of accounting and product failures

    - H&R Block was founded in 1946 by Henry and Richard Bloch with $5,000 borrowed capital and a $5 tax-service ad in The Kansas City Star (1955)
    - In August 2005, the company disclosed it had overstated earnings by $91.1 million over two years, citing insufficient internal resources for complex tax accounting
    - In February 2006, H&R Block announced it had miscalculated its own state income taxes, owing $32 million in back taxes
    - New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer sued over the Express IRA product in March 2006, alleging 85% of account holders lost money after fees; the case settled in 2009 for $11.4–$19.4 million plus $750,000 in costs
    - California settled a separate 2009 case over refund anticipation loans for $4.85 million, and H&R Block exited that business entirely in 2011

    To listen to this podcast ad-free and access premium episodes, try our subscription with a 14-day free trial at obomedia.com.

    © 2026 OBOMEDIA. All rights reserved.
    This episode and its content (audio, text, and related materials) are the exclusive property of OBOMEDIA and are protected by applicable copyright laws. Reproduction, distribution, editing, or commercial use, in whole or in part, without prior written permission from OBOMEDIA is prohibited. For permissions, licensing, and business inquiries: business@obomedia.com.
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    18 min
  • The toaster oven that flattened the heel and rewrote running shoes

    The toaster oven that flattened the heel and rewrote running shoes
    Sep 7 2026
    The toaster oven that flattened the heel and rewrote running shoes

    In a family shoe store in Orem, Utah, a young clerk takes a pair of scissors to a running shoe, cuts away the padded heel, and reseals it inside a toaster oven. The result is a shoe with no height difference between heel and toe, built on a hunch about how the foot is actually supposed to land. What happens when a company founded on stripping things away from a shoe is later pushed, at the moment it matters most, to start adding things back in?

    In this episode, we trace Altra Running from a single modified prototype in a Utah shoe store to a record-breaking treadmill run and a corporate acquisition, asking what a company owes to the idea it was built on once growth, awards, and a buyer start asking for something else.

    Person: Golden Harper
    Location: Orem, Utah
    Date: 2009
    Case: the zero-drop running shoe, first modified by hand with scissors and a toaster oven
    Status: acquired by VF Corporation in June 2018, later strained by the parent company's financial troubles

    - Jacob Puzey ran fifty miles on a treadmill in 4:57:45 in December 2016, beating the previous world record by more than an hour
    - Altra Footwear launched in 2009, founded by Golden Harper with Brian Beckstead, Quirl Hansen, and Jeremy Howlett, after major shoe companies declined the Zero Drop concept
    - By September 2013, Altra reported 300 percent annual growth

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    © 2026 OBOMEDIA. All rights reserved.
    This episode and its content (audio, text, and related materials) are the exclusive property of OBOMEDIA and are protected by applicable copyright laws. Reproduction, distribution, editing, or commercial use, in whole or in part, without prior written permission from OBOMEDIA is prohibited. For permissions, licensing, and business inquiries: business@obomedia.com.
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    16 min
  • The rewritten loan software that let him borrow billions without anyone checking

    The rewritten loan software that let him borrow billions without anyone checking
    Sep 7 2026
    The rewritten loan software that let him borrow billions without anyone checking

    Somewhere inside a General Motors financing office on Long Island, employees had a nickname for the days when their own systems seemed to bend around a single customer's paperwork. They called them Mac Attacks. What kind of borrower gets an entire lending institution to rewrite its own code just to keep up with him?

    In this episode, we trace how one Long Island car dealer built an eleven-year borrowing operation inside General Motors' own financing arm, asking how an institution designed to verify collateral came to never check it at all.

    Person: John McNamara
    Location: Port Jefferson, Long Island, New York
    Date: 1980 to 1990
    Case: roughly six billion dollars in GMAC loans against non-existent conversion vans
    Status: scheme collapsed in 1990 when GM auditors found no matching vehicle records; McNamara pleaded down to five years in a 1992 Brooklyn federal trial

    - McNamara, born in 1940, took over as President of Sales at his father's Pontiac-Buick dealership in Port Jefferson after an earlier Florida business venture ended in bankruptcy
    - The scheme used shell entities including Kay Industries Inc. (Indiana), McNamara Pontiac-Buick, and Cydonia Trading CTD (Cyprus), all controlled by McNamara, to cycle fictitious van purchases through GMAC loans
    - Annual borrowing rose from $250 million in 1985 to $715 million in 1989 to $1.8 billion in 1990
    - GMAC extended McNamara's first-payment window from the standard 30 days to 60 days and modified its loan-processing software to handle his volume
    - At peak volume, Kay Industries would have needed to convert 200 to 400 vans a day, exceeding the output of the entire U.S. van conversion industry
    - The unpaid balance at collapse was $436 million; GMAC's internal review concluded the case revealed no "systemic problems" with its core business functions
    - Assistant U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch noted McNamara's personal life was largely unchanged before and after his conviction

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    © 2026 OBOMEDIA. All rights reserved.
    This episode and its content (audio, text, and related materials) are the exclusive property of OBOMEDIA and are protected by applicable copyright laws. Reproduction, distribution, editing, or commercial use, in whole or in part, without prior written permission from OBOMEDIA is prohibited. For permissions, licensing, and business inquiries: business@obomedia.com.
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    20 min
  • The five hundred impossible trades on his investor statements toppled his empire

    The five hundred impossible trades on his investor statements toppled his empire
    Sep 7 2026
    The five hundred impossible trades on his investor statements toppled his empire

    Five hundred times, the price printed on an account statement described a trade the market itself never recorded — a stock bought or sold at a number the exchange never touched, on a day when the real trading range was somewhere else entirely. The statements kept arriving anyway, year after year, and the fees kept getting collected. Did the man signing off on them know?

    In this episode, we trace the paper trail behind J. Ezra Merkin's decade-long channel of investor money into Bernard Madoff's firm, asking what it means to be paid tens of millions of dollars a year not to check numbers that anyone with a market data terminal could have disproven in under a minute.

    Person: J. Ezra Merkin
    Location: New York City (Park Avenue, and the Fifth Avenue Synagogue)
    Date: December 2008
    Case: five hundred trades on investor account statements priced outside the actual market range
    Status: settled for $405 million in 2012, with arbitration panels finding negligence but no court finding of fraud

    - Merkin directed more than $1 billion to Bernard Madoff's firm starting in 1992, and collected over $470 million in fees between 1995 and 2007
    - Victor Teicher, who managed Merkin's offshore fund, told him directly that Madoff's steady returns were "impossible"
    - Trustee Irving Picard's May 7, 2009 complaint alleged Merkin's three funds withdrew at least $494 million from Madoff accounts since 2002
    - Institutions tied to Merkin's circle lost heavily: Yeshiva University ($110 million), NYU ($24 million), and the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity ($15.4 million)
    - Merkin resigned as GMAC chairman in January 2009 under Federal Reserve pressure, resigned as Fifth Avenue Synagogue president by May 2009, and later sold his 12-painting Rothko collection for $320 million

    To listen to this podcast ad-free and access premium episodes, try our subscription with a 14-day free trial at obomedia.com.

    © 2026 OBOMEDIA. All rights reserved.
    This episode and its content (audio, text, and related materials) are the exclusive property of OBOMEDIA and are protected by applicable copyright laws. Reproduction, distribution, editing, or commercial use, in whole or in part, without prior written permission from OBOMEDIA is prohibited. For permissions, licensing, and business inquiries: business@obomedia.com.
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    19 min
  • The check that financed the party and ignited a country

    The check that financed the party and ignited a country
    Sep 7 2026
    The check that financed the party and ignited a country

    A shoe factory worker's investment scheme was paying depositors one hundred percent interest, and half a country's economy was riding on it. Then, in a single week in January 1997, more than a dozen firms stopped paying at once, and a $550,000 check tied to a ruling political party surfaced in the record. What happens when a government that controls every institution in the country simply chooses to say nothing?

    In this episode, we trace Albania's collapse from the warnings the IMF issued in 1995 through the pyramid schemes' failure, the armed uprising, and the international intervention that followed, asking what happens to a society when no institution is left capable of telling the truth.

    Person: Sali Berisha
    Location: Vlorë, Albania
    Date: January 1997
    Case: the pyramid investment schemes and their collapse
    Status: government resignation, foreign intervention, and elections after months of armed unrest

    - A check for $550,000 left the accounts of the firm Gjallica for the Socialist Party of Albania on January 7, 1997; Gjallica declared bankruptcy on February 4, 1997.
    - By the end of 1996, pyramid scheme liabilities were estimated at more than one billion dollars, nearly half of Albania's GDP.
    - On February 28, 1997, rebels attacked the SHIK intelligence headquarters in Vlorë, killing nine people, six of them intelligence officers.
    - The UN Security Council authorized Operation Alba on March 28, 1997; roughly seven thousand troops from Italy, Greece, Romania, Turkey, Austria, France, and other countries deployed starting April 15.
    - On June 29, 1997, the Socialist Party won 100 of 151 parliamentary seats with 72.6 percent turnout, and Sali Berisha resigned as president on July 24, 1997.

    To listen to this podcast ad-free and access premium episodes, try our subscription with a 14-day free trial at obomedia.com.

    © 2026 OBOMEDIA. All rights reserved.
    This episode and its content (audio, text, and related materials) are the exclusive property of OBOMEDIA and are protected by applicable copyright laws. Reproduction, distribution, editing, or commercial use, in whole or in part, without prior written permission from OBOMEDIA is prohibited. For permissions, licensing, and business inquiries: business@obomedia.com.
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    19 min