An Army of Normal Folks - Steve Wanta: How To Loan Money 100% of The Time (Pt 1)

Episode Date: November 18, 2025

Steve Wanta is the co-founder of JUST, a nonprofit lender to 14,000 black and brown female entrepreneurs in Texas. And because they’ve built an unheard of system based on trust and community, they’re achieving unheard of results such as loaning money to 100% of applicants while also being repaid 99% of the time!   Support the show: https://www.normalfolks.us/premiumSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We will lend 100% of the time. We don't check credit. I don't understand that you don't check credit part. So credit scores in the United States, that concept is very rigid. And it's designed to protect the money. Which is understandable. Totally understandable. Don't get mad at the reality.

Let's work with it. FICO came in, I think it was like 1996. To be fair. The trick here is the way to be fair is to assess someone's past. So if you lead up to that moment, you've never had access. then how of a sudden is that system fair? For us, credit, score, or any data are things that will not allow you to trust their potential. So I say this to bankers to make them uncomfortable.

They want to understand just. I say, imagine 100% of the people that walk through your branch, you must say yes, 100% of the time. And get repaid nearly 100% of the time. Welcome to an army of normal folks. Bill Courtney. I'm a normal guy. I'm a husband. I'm a father. I'm an entrepreneur. And I've been a football coach in intercity Memphis. And the last part somehow led to an Oscar for the film about our team. It's called undefeated. Guys, I believe our country's problems are never going to be solved by a bunch of fancy people in nice suits using big words that nobody ever uses on CNN and Fox,

but rather by an army of normal folks. That's us. Just you and me deciding, hey, maybe I can help. That's what Steve Wanta, the voice you just heard is done. Steve is the co-founder of Just, a non-profit lender to 18,000 black and brown female entrepreneurs in Texas.

And because they built an unheard-of system based on trust and community, they're achieving unheard-of. of results, such as loaning money to 100% of applicants to the tune of $41 million. And yet, they've been repaid 99% of the time. I cannot wait for you to meet Steve right after these brief messages from our generous sponsors. The forces shaping the world's economies and financial markets can be hard to spot. Even though they are such a powerful player in finance, you wouldn't really know that you are interacting with them.

And even harder to understand. Donald Trump's trade war, 2.0, is only accelerating the process of de-dollarization, which in a way is jargon for people turning away from the dollar. That is where the big take from Bloomberg podcast comes in to connect the dots. How unusual is a deal like this? Precedent. Every weekday afternoon, we dive deep into one big global business story. The biggest story of the reaction of the oil market to the conflict in the Middle East is one of what has not happened. Katie, you told me that ETFs are your favorite thing. They are. Explain that. Why is that the case? And unpack what it means for you.

Our breakfast foods are consistent consumer staples, and so they sort of become outsized indicators of inflation. Listen to the big take from Bloomberg News. Every week. Day afternoon on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And she said, Johnny, the kids didn't come home last night. Along the central Texas planes, teens are dying. Suicides that don't make sense. Strange accidents and brutal murders. In what seems to be, a plot ripped straight out of Breaking Bad. drugs, alcohol, trafficking of people. There are people out there that absolutely know what happened.

Listen to Paper Ghosts, the Texas Teen Murders, on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Robert Smith. This is Jacob Goldstein. And we used to host a show called Planet Money. And now we're back making this new podcast called Business History about the best ideas and people and businesses in history. And some of those.

the worst people, horrible ideas, and destructive companies in the history of business. Having a genius idea without a need for it is nothing. It's like not having it at all. It's a very simple, elegant lesson. Make something people want. First episode, how Southwest Airlines use cheap seats and free whiskey to fight its way into the airline business. The most Texas story ever. There's a lot of mavericks in that story. We're going to have mavericks on the show. We're going to have plenty of robber barons. So many robber barons. And you know what? They're not all bad. And we'll talk about some of the classic great moments of famous business geniuses,

along with some of the darker moments that often get overlooked. Like Thomas Edison and the electric chair. Listen to business history on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. What do you get when you mix 1950s Hollywood, a Cuban musician with a dream, and one of the most iconic sitcoms of all time? You get Desi Arness, a trailblazer, a businessman, a businessman, a husband, and maybe most importantly, the first Latino to break prime time wide open. I'm Wilmer Valderrama, and yes, I grew up watching him, probably just like you and millions

of others. But for me, I saw myself in his story. From plenty canary cages to this night here in New York, it's a long ways. On the podcast starring Desi Arnaz and Wilmer Valderrama, I'll take you in a journey to Desi's life, the moments it has overlapped with mine, how he redefined American television and what that meant for all of us watching from the sidelines. waiting for a face like hours on screen. This is the story of how one-man's spotlight

lit the path for so many others and how we carry his legacy today. Listen to starring Desi Arnaz and Wilmer Valderrama that's part of the MyCultura podcast network available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Malcolm Gladwell here.

This season on Revisionous History, we're going back to the spring of 1988 to a town in northwest Alabama where a man committed a crime that would spiral out of control. 35 years. That's how long Elizabeth's and its family

waited for justice to occur. 35 long years. I want to figure out why this case went on for as long as it did, why it took so many bizarre and unsettling turns along the way, and why, despite our best efforts to resolve suffering,

we all too often make suffering worse. He would say to himself, turn to the right, to the victim's family and apologize, turn to the left, tell my family I love him. So he would have this little practice. To the right, I'm sorry, to the left, I love you. From Revisionous History, this is The Alabama Murders.

Listen to Revisionous History, The Alabama Murders on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Steve Wana from Austin, Texas. Thanks for joining us. How you doing? Really good. Good. Good. Good. Well, good. Well, I really appreciate you coming by. Everybody, Steve, is the co-founder and CEO of Just, J-U-S-T, which we'll get to. Believe it or not, before I read all about you, and I saw Just, I think Just is a pretty good title because I got the idea just from, I mean, I literally knew nothing about you. And I thought, that has to be about.

doing something just for people that aren't as fortunate as us. And it turns out it's really interesting. So we'll get to it. But first, I guess you're a Packers fan. I am a diehard Packers fan. I bleed green and gold. I was born in Green Bay, Wisconsin, about a mile from the stadium. Were you really?

You're born about a mile from the stadium? That's pretty cool. Yeah, I was talking to Cassius a little bit about the culture of the NFL in sports. And man, I played football growing up was offensive linemen and defensive linemen at all 5'8 and 175 pounds. But it was just every day on Sunday, that's one of those moments my wife and my kids give me because I feel connected to community just by simply watching that game.

I feel like I actually have some influence over the game, which obviously is not the case. but yeah, you're a football coach, you know. Well, we folks from down south, very happy that we were able to send you a Southern Mississippi guy up there to a quarterback for you for many years. Legend. Yeah. Is he still a legend up there? Yeah, totally legend.

We're talking about Brett Farr. Brett Farr, when he, that whole transition to Aaron Rogers, there was a nation divided. Really? Yeah, half of the jerseys were fours. The other half were 12. and my grandmother, she had, she was going to be a nun. She met my grandfather, who was going to be a priest, and instead they decided to have 17 children.

There's a switch. Yeah, they ran a bar. Are you kidding? Strong Irish Catholic. Unbelievable. In Green Bay. In northern Wisconsin. Got it.

But my grandmother said, we don't own Brett Farr. Everybody got, it all changed when Brett Farr went to the Minnesota Vikings. That was something not. And he had like one of the best years of his NFL career. It was total insults, but that's like, don't mess with a gunslinger, man.

He'll get you back. Well, I mean, it wasn't his choice. He would have stayed at Green Bay, right? He left, he retired, and then he said, nah, never mind. And they said, well, actually, we're pretty excited by Aaron Rogers. Yeah, so see you. See, yeah.

We don't need this. And then, you know, the same thing sort of happened with Aaron Rogers and Jordan Love. Well, I'll tell you, I think Brett Farr was a perfect fit for Green Bay because it's a blue-collarish-feeling town, hardworking, salt of their kind of thing. And that's just how he played ball. He just hung it out there. Yeah, no. So it was a love affair. Absolutely.

I mean, he had one of the longest streaks of consecutive games, the stuff that he went through to play. I mean, people, he was so tough. And, you know, Green Bay is 100,000 people. And the stadium fits 80,000 people. Right. So I think for me, a lot of the work that we do, this idea of this transformational properties of community, really deep, authentic community that rally around a higher purpose.

And this high purpose happens to be the Green Bay Packers is pretty special. All right. So this interview has nothing to do with the Green Bay Packers. But if you want to talk football, we can do that for two hours. call it, you know. So, Steve grew up in Green Bay, and, you know, I don't want to get, I think it's important, obviously, but I guess you got a job in technology and learn to speak Spanish.

Why don't you take us through how that all worked? Yeah, I was, there's no real good reason why I should speak Spanish. I remember. There's really no reason why I should. I remember really distinctly being a young kid and my aunt was taking Spanish classes. I just said, oh, I could speak Spanish. I made a bunch of noises. And she said, oh, you just said, cow.

Like, that's pretty cool. So I had a direction. I had a place that I knew I wanted to get to, but I didn't know what I was going to do along the way. I didn't have some grand vision of certainly starting the organization we have today. But I just really wanted to be fluent in Spanish. You just wanted to. It's just a thing. And I had this great opportunity to go study abroad.

And I fell in love with culture. I fell in love with connecting with people that didn't look like me. You know, in Green Bay, we, lack of diversity is an understatement. I mean, it was just the reality of white Midwest. And, you know, if you were black in Green Bay in the 80s, they thought you were a Packer or connected to the Packers. Wow. So Ken Brooks, this kid I played pee-wee football with, he was a freshman in high school, and he got asked for his autograph.

No kidding. Just to tell you how little diversity there was. And I saw that as this amazing loss that I had personally to not have a chance to understand how other people live in all forms of that, income, race. So being submersed in South America was just fascinating. It was amazing. So I knew what I wanted to do, but I didn't know how to do it. And that was being part of a broader, a bigger community. So I got a job at a tech company.

I was starting, and I thought I was going to die in a cubicle. And I'm like, they got something else that's got to give. Well, so let's go back to the study abroad thing. What, was it Costa Rica, Guatemala? Venezuela. Venezuela. Wow. Yeah, this was like 1997.

So before Chavez. Before they completely fell apart. Yeah. And it was one of the most prosperous of South American countries. Chavez came in and promised to fix corruption, give to the people. And then it became, you know, what it is today, which is so many, including friends from Venezuela, have left because of what has happened to that government. And, like, there's amazing, beautiful parts of that country. They had a chance to go to study abroad in Chile later. And I saw a whole different form of both from climate to, to people, to accents. Before going to Venezuela, I thought everything was like Mexico. I had such little exposure,

and I was such an idiot going in college. I didn't even realize that it would snow in Chile, so I didn't bring a jacket. Oh, gosh. So. Panagonia. Like, keep going south. Patagonia is there.

They're skiing. I mean, I blame it on the fact that there wasn't the internet, the same way it is today. It was definitely not my fault. You know, so that, all of that led to just deep, deep passion to be speaking Spanish, but what that really meant was being connected with folks

that didn't look like me and, yeah, such fun personally. Curious, the Spanish that's in Mexico, the Spanish that's in Venezuela, the Spanish that's in Brazil, and the Spanish that's in Chile, those are almost different languages, aren't that? Yeah, very different, like, I do not speak another language. I'm just speaking from what I've read that it's more than just dialogue.

Yeah, there's different language, well, a couple things. There's different slang and, you know, in Venezuela, Bolo is, means like their local currency, Bolivores, and Bolo in Guatemala means drunk. Oh, well, so, you know, you've got to have enough understanding. And I've stepped in my, I put my foot in my mouth a few times, but. You know, what's really fascinating about Guatemala is that there are 23 different Mayan languages. Really? In addition to Spanish. So you would have people still addressed in their traditional indigenous wares.

And, you know, they're speaking where I was a Peace Corps volunteer. They spoke mom. And that was not even, not connected to Spanish at all. Wow. Yeah. All right. So you're doing this in college? College studied to brought a couple of times.

So Tuesday, I graduated college in 2000. I studied abroad a couple of times. Then I got a job, a technology job, because they had big South American operations called Unisys. And I'm like, that's how I'm going to get there. I was going to move to Miami. And then, you know, one thing led to another. I worked for Unisys and they moved me from Seattle to Austin, Texas.

What did you go to college? University of Minnesota, Golden Gophers. The golden gophers. Worst chance in the world. They spell out all of Minnesota, and then at the end they say, go, gofers. It's terrible. It takes, he falls asleep with a chance. All right.

So, you're this Midwestern guy. You have a love for Spanish. You've been exposed all over Central and South America to not only language, but I guess culture. Yeah. Curious, one more question. Did you learn more about culture or learn? more about language studying overbroad? Definitely culture.

You know, I think there was language. What I really, one of the things that would help me in to learn the language is I played rugby in Venezuela, played rugby in Chile, played rugby in Chile, played rugby at college. And I was a chance to be connected outside of the university with people that were from the, from the local community. So it was only Spanish there. But I think throughout all of it, I realized that there are, we're all the same. same on some level. And regardless of your background. So it was really a humanizing thing

that removed it from a map and from on TV to something real real. And now a few messages from our generous sponsors. But first, I wanted to share an awesome update that in January and February, we're launching the first six local chapters of an army normal folks if you happen to live in one of these communities and you'd be interested in being part of it email Alex and he'll connect you to their leaders these communities are memphis my hometown oxford mississippi Alex's hometown Atlanta Milwaukee Wichita and we're going to announce the sixth soon if you'd be interested in leading a local chapter in your community will hopefully be launching more in spring or summer.

So please, reach out to Alex on that. His email is Army at normalfolks. us. We'll be right back. The forces shaping the world's economies and financial markets can be hard to spot. Even though they are such a powerful player in finance, you wouldn't really know that you are interacting with them. And even harder to understand.

Donald Trump's trade war, 2.0, is only accelerating the process of de-dollarization, which in a way is jargon for people turning away from the dollar. That is where the big take from Bloomberg podcast comes in, to connect the dots. How unusual is a deal like this? Unprecedented. Every weekday afternoon, we dive deep into one big global business story. The biggest story of the reaction of the oil market to the conflict in the Middle East is one of what has not happened.

Katie, you told me that ETFs are your favorite thing. They are. Explain that. Why is that the case? And unpack what it means for you. Our breakfast foods are consistent consumer staples, and so they sort of become outsized indicators of inflation. Listen to the big take from Bloomberg News

every weekday afternoon on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. She said, Johnny, the kids didn't come home last that. Along the central Texas plains, teens are dying, suicides that don't make sense, strange accidents, and brutal murders. In what seems to be, a plot ripped straight out of breaking bad. Drugs, alcohol, trafficking of people. There are people out there that absolutely know what happened. Listen to paper ghosts, the Texas teen murders on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Robert Smith, and this is Jacob Goldstein, and we used to host a show called Planet Money. And now we're back making this new podcast called Business History about the best ideas and people and businesses in history. And some of the worst people, horrible ideas, and destructive companies in the history of business. Having a genius idea without a need for it is nothing. It's like not having it at all.

It's a very simple, elegant lesson. make something people want. First episode, how Southwest Airlines use cheap seats and free whiskey to fight its way into the airline business. The most Texas story ever. There's a lot of mavericks in that story.

We're going to have mavericks on the show. We're going to have plenty of robber barons. So many robber barons. And you know what? They're not all bad. And we'll talk about some of the classic great moments of famous business geniuses along with some of the darker moments

that often get overlooked. Like Thomas Edison and the electric chair. Listen to business history on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. What do you get when you mix 1950s Hollywood, a Cuban musician with a dream, and one of the most iconic sitcoms of all time?

You get Desi Arness, a trailblazer, a businessman, a husband, and maybe, most importantly, the first Latino to break prime time wide open. I'm Wilmer Valderrama, and yes, I grew up watching him, probably just like you and millions of others. But for me, I saw myself in his story. From plening canary cages to this night here in New York, it's a long ways. On the podcast starring Desi Arnaz and Wilmer Valderama,

I'll take you in a journey to Desi's life. The moments it has overlapped with mine, how he redefined American television, and what that meant for all of us watching from the sidelines, waiting for a face like hours on screen. This is the story of how one man's spotlight lit the path for so many others and how we carry his legacy today.

Listen to starring Desi Arnaz and Wilmer Valdera That's part of the My Cultura podcast network available on the IHard Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Malcolm Gladwell here. This season on Revisionous History, we're going back to the spring of 1988 to a town in northwest Alabama, where a man committed a crime that would spiral out of control. 35 years. That's how long Elizabeth's and its family waited for justice to occur. 35 long years. I want to figure out why this case went on for as long as it did,

why it took so many bizarre and unsettling turns along the way, and why, despite our best efforts to resolve suffering, we all too often make suffering worse. He would say to himself, turn to the right, to the victim's family, and apologize, turn to the left, tell my family I love him. So he had this little practice, to the right, I'm sorry, to the left, I love you. From Revisionous History, this is The Alabama Murders. Listen to Revisionist History, The Alabama Murders on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

There's nothing like beating the crap. I don't want another for two and a half hours and then going to drinking beer together. Yeah, it was... That's what rugby, to me, is the greatest sport on earth for. from that perspective, you will literally for two and a half hours trying to kill somebody, and then everybody goes in your experience. Yeah. Yeah.

Is that how it is there, too? Absolutely. I mean, I think they're saying, like, soccer is a gentleman. I forget how it goes. Soccer is a gentleman's game played by ruffians. Rugby is a ruffian's game played by gentlemen. That's one of an old saying, but it's true. Right.

So I've moved to Austin, and I am like the captain of their rugby team. I am all in, and partly because I didn't have a lot of purpose in life. It was like, go to the cubicle, and the thing that sort of saves me from just day-in-and-day-out perspective is this purpose of rugby. But it was very bad for my back. It was very bad for the level of beer that I drank. I'm like, I can't get out of here, man. I'm going to be like, I cut, pull the rip cord, and that's why I decided join the Peace Corps.

okay so you work you get this cool job you're in austin uh you've had all these experiences and was the peace corps after the cubicle plant incident yeah so tell that because i think that's hilarious okay so because there's a plant that was basically a metaphor for your life totally and so it gets back to rugby so i you know i'm playing rugby i go to the chiropractor because i can't like look sideways you're really that bad up yeah yeah yeah how old are you I was 25, so the, you know, I can't feel a couple fingers. Oh, you've got nerve damage in your shoulders or something. So the doctor, the chiropractor says, hey, thanks for being a patient.

Here's my, here's a plant. Here's an office plant. So. Here's an office plant. We go by, so I like, great. You know, I put this office plant in my desk. And then my boss's boss one day comes to, you know, it's like a Friday. So I'm kind of hung over.

And she comes to my desk and she says, hey, Steve, you know, office. space? Do you have that TPS report? You know, what's the, what you, where's the report? I said, I'll get it to you. So as she's leaving, she looks and sees the plants. It's dead on my desk. She said, oh, Steve, you should get rid of that plant. It's dead. And I said, well, actually, it reminds me every day I walk in here, a little piece of me dies. Oh, God. You said to the boss's boss. So she sort of backpedals a little bit. I thought it was funny. And she didn't think it was very funny. So I really, it was a moment of reflection in. humor and saying, well, that actually is kind of true, so I probably should do something

about it. And that's when I was sort of the emotional push over the edge to finish my Peace Corps application. And that was ultimately, they assigned me to Guatemala and that happened shortly after. Okay. So let's recap. A dude who grows up in Green Bay, part of a family of a potential nun and priest who said, now, let's own a bar and have 19,000 children. And so I know my other grandfather was a banker and a lawyer.

No kidding. Yeah. So I had a bartender and a banker as my grandfatherly figures. That's crazy. Yeah. That's very cool, too. So you bounce around, you learn to speak Spanish, you get this technology job, which is kind of a destination for a lot of folks.

And this plant metaphorically describes how you felt about living in this cubicle and where your life is. And you literally say at 25, I'm reset and I'm going to Peace Corps. And let's be honest, the Peace Corps, I mean, it's great work. And it's great exposure. And it's probably a great education. But you're not making any money doing it. Yeah, for sure. Right?

So you are really at 25 years old. hitting the reset button. Yeah, you know, 25. I didn't have kids. I mean, you can do that. You can be single and broke once in life, so if you're going to do it,

now's the time. But the point is, you kind of worked to get to this place, and you just said, reset. Yeah. Only in hindsight did my mother say that she was very worried,

very concerned, but I had an amazing support system with my family, and, you know, that there was something, different about being in a rural Guatemalan community living side by side for two years. Yeah, so there it is. That's the reset. Now, let's pick it up from there. You go to Guatemala for the Peace Corps, and a lot of folks don't understand what that is, but that is a two-year

commitment. What in the world do you do in Guatemala for two years? The irony is I'm actually working with farmers. I have this dead plant, and now I'm supposed to help. So I help. I help. There was a greenhouse project. So I helped these farmers get to local markets, sell their tomatoes. And it was another example of how important exposure is. So I took a group of our local farmers, and, you know, they struggle to speak Spanish. They're speaking the local indigenous language. Oh, is that right?

So these Guatemalans who rule are still speaking, whatever. And my community was mom. mom, there's other like Catch a Kell, there's 20, I think 26 different languages. Okay. So I'd take them to a pizza place to say, hey, this is where we're selling your tomatoes. And half of the people had never seen pizza before. And this is like 15-minute drive. And I was, I think...

That's phenomenal. Yeah. These folks in Guatemala, who don't really even speak Spanish in Guatemala, because the rural farmers have not made it more than 15 minutes away from their, village to see pizza. Yeah. That's, that's, that in and of itself should be eye-opening to people listening to us. That's the reality in the world in many, many places.

And I think the big thing that I really hit home for me is in the peace score, I see volunteers, they pick empathy or apathy. Oftentimes, the actions can look very similar. And for me, I towed that line. a couple of times, I would be really frustrated. And then more often than that, I chose empathy because I realized I did not understand what they had lived,

their access to whatever it was education or experience. You know, my counterpart, Juan, hilarious dude, that could grow anything. You know, I asked them to finish the report for some funding we got. I said, I've done three quarters of it, just you finish the rest of it because you have the answers.

and I come back the next day, you didn't do anything. And I'm like, on. Like, bro, come on. And what I very quickly learned is he had never turned on the computer before. And he had stepped in a new role. This new role had some administrative part to the job. And I'm like, oh, I am an idiot. So that exposure, I think there's a big dose of humility that comes to that,

understanding if you're making assumptions and judgments on people that are so flawed. You know, I think that was the biggest gift, especially in hindsight, that I got from the Peace Corps. Interesting. All right, so, Guatemala, and your two years is up.

There's a, I mean, I don't know how many these stories we want to go through, but I find myself in a Mexican wrestling ring. Oh, I want to hear that. How do you, quote, find yourself at a Mexican wrestling ring? I've been a Mexican wrestling ring twice. the male version of prostitution. First of all, when you, quote, find yourself somewhere,

typically the backstory to that is you took a number of steps very proactively to end up where you vote found yourself. So how to tell me that? That's the greatest thing. Well, so we're going to go, my pieceboard buddy and I, I'm going to extend my trip for my service to, there was a natural disaster in Guatemala, so I was going to extend for another a few months. But, you know, a little break, we're going to take a drive to Mexico. He's going to keep on to the United States, and I'm going to come back. So we find ourselves

on the beach in Puerto Escondido and the southern part of Mexico, and then it's the ad for Mexican wrestling on the beach. And I'm like, it's so perfect. You know, I grew up watching WWF, and we show up and everybody's on the beach, there's big crowd, and then I go up with my friend Brian, and he says, can we get in the ring? Just take a picture. I was like, sure, fine. But that to me was this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to go through the actual

the dream I had already had in my head. So I whipped him around, threw him against ropes, clothes lined him, picked him up, slammed him on the turf. And then it was awesome. And it's actually on YouTube somewhere. So I'm trying to get my views up. It was such a cool

climax and then I proceeded to get typhoid fever and spent three days in a Mexican hospital and the kicker of this is actually was the greatest gift I've ever been given. Of course. Because I couldn't continue my service. I had a bunch of stuff that happened medically. So because I got back, I'd have started to look for a job.

And at that time, Whole Foods Market had just started a foundation, and I got a, like, a monster.com job posting that said, hey, you might qualify for this job. And it was... Was it because you were bilingual in the... Well, because actually, the guy that started the foundation, he was a Peace Corps volunteer in the 70s in Honduras.

It was, you know, what the foundation started, which I think we'll get into, was started in... They started two projects, one in Guatemala and the other in Costa Rica. So they need someone to go back and support those. two projects. So they're really looking for someone that was like a B-score volunteer that could, you know, roll up their sleeves and not be afraid. That's some experience.

Yeah. In speaking Spanish was central to it. Yeah. We'll be right back. The forces shaping the world's economies and financial markets can be hard to spot. Even though they are such a powerful player in finance, you wouldn't really know that you are interacting with them. And even harder to understand. Donald Trump's trade war, 2.0, is only accelerating the process of de-dollarization, which in a way is jargon for people turning away from the dollar. That is where the big take from Bloomberg podcast comes in, to connect the dots.

How unusual is a deal like this? Unprecedented. Every weekday afternoon, we dive deep into one big day. global business story. The biggest story of the reaction of the oil market to the conflict in the Middle East is one of what has not happened. Katie, you told me that ETFs are your favorite thing. They are. Explain that. Why is that the case? And unpack what it means for you. Our breakfast foods are consistent consumer staples, and so they sort of become outsized indicators of inflation. Listen to the big take from Bloomberg News every weekday afternoon

on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. She said, Johnny, the kids didn't come home last night. Along the central Texas plains, teens are dying. Suicides that don't make sense. Strange accidents and brutal murders. In what seems to be, a plot ripped straight out of Breaking Bad. Drugs, alcohol, trafficking of people.

There are people out there that absolutely know what happened. Listen to Paper Ghosts, the Texas Teen Murders, on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Robert Smith. This is Jacob Goldstein, and we used to host a show called Planet Money. And now we're back making this new podcast called Business History about the best ideas and people and businesses in history. And some of the worst people, horrible ideas and destructive companies in the history of business. Having a genius idea without a need for it is nothing. It's like not having it at all.

It's a very simple, elegant lesson. Make something people want. First episode, How Southwest Airlines Use Cheap Seats and Free Whiskey to fight its way into the airline business. The Most Texas Story Ever. There's a lot of Mavericks in that story. We're going to have Mavericks on the show. We're going to have plenty of robber barons. So many robber barons.

And you know what? They're not all bad. And we'll talk about some of the classic great moments of famous business genius. along with some of the darker moments that often get overlooked. Like Thomas Edison and the electric chair. Listen to business history on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. What do you get when you mix 1950s Hollywood, a Cuban musician with a dream, and one of the most iconic sitcoms of all time?

You get Desi Arness, a trailblazer, a businessman, a husband, and maybe most importantly, the first Latino to break prime time wide open. I'm Wilmer Valderama, and yes, I grew up watching him, probably just like you and millions of others. But for me, I saw myself in his story. From plening canary cages to this night here in New York, it's a long ways. On the podcast starring Desi Arnaz and Wilmer Valderrama, I'll take you in a journey to Desi's life. The moments it has overlap with mine, how he redefined American television, and what that meant for all of us watching from the sidelines, waiting for a face like hours on screen.

This is the story of how one-man spotlight lit the path for so many others and how we carry his legacy today. Listen to starring Desi Arnaz and Wilmer Valderrama that's part of the My Cultura podcast network available on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Malcolm Gladwell here. This season on Revisionous History, we're going back to the spring of 1988 to a town in northwest Alabama

where a man committed a crime that would spiral out of control. 35 years. That's how long Elizabeth's and its family waited for justice to occur. 35 long years. I want to figure out

why this case went on for as long as it did, why it took so many bizarre and unsettling turns along the way, and why, despite our best efforts to resolve suffering,

we all too often make suffering worse. He would say to himself, turn to the right to the victim's family and apologize, turn to the left, tell my family I love him. So he had this little practice. To the right, I'm sorry.

To the left, I love you. From Revisionous History, this is The Alabama Murders. Listen to Revisionous History, The Alabama Murders on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Just curious, get between your ears, midway through or 75% of the way through your time of Guatemala. You know this is a two-year commitment.

What in your mind are your thinking is next for you? I, you know, the piece word to me is like a fine wine. It gets better with age. So when I was in the experience, I was not very happy. Because I, in so many ways, I think of the beautiful part of like American culture. It's like we're builders. We're going to change. We're going to fix stuff. And that was not what I was supposed to do. And I was met with... What were you supposed to do? There's three goals of the B score. One is provide some technical

expertise and, you know, help. So I knew some business stuff. So I was sort of helping farmers. The other is an exchange. So I learned from them. They learned for me. We're good people. And the third goal is we come back to the United States and we share what we've learned. so in some ways this podcast is is sharing that third goal so I you know I thought I could go in and I could fix anything and you know but I also didn't know what needed to fix fixing or you know it was back to that lack of understanding so I felt less capable of service less capable of contributing something meaningful so when I was leaving I just I love business I thought you know I'll just get a good job and I can speak Spanish

I was going to go sell Hilty Tools at Home Depot. I was going to be a rep that was I was actually potentially going to go back to Green Bay and sell cheese. I just wanted to both do business because I thought, you know, there's a fair exchange and I want to do it in the context of speaking Spanish. Got it. So Monster reaches out. You're like, here it is, business, Spanish. Probably important to give a little bit of context on how the foundation got started. So John Mackey, founder of Whole Foods Market, he 20 years into building the grocery store, said,

hey, it's time for us to give back to the global community. We traded with hundreds of countries, and he found and fell in love with microcredit. Well, that makes sense. That's cool, too. Super cool. And John Mackey, smart guy that did a bunch of research and said, why don't we, to start, why don't we partner with the best? So the best are this group out of Bangladesh, Grameen Bank. About who, Bangladesh?

Yeah, Bangladesh. Where does that come from? Well, they, microcredit was this thing that started to gain momentum. In 2005, the World Bank called it the year of microcredit. It was the first solution to a social problem, poverty, that had a business-like approach that could make loans, get those loans repaid. So there was a ton of excitement from people from all walks of life that saw a potentially a business-like solution for a real entrenched social problem.

And it started to shift how people saw the poor. And the idea, and now I'm asking, I'm stating, but with a question mark at the end, if I kind of moderately understand the whole microcredit thing as it pertains to 2005 in Bangladesh, it's exactly what it sounds like, really small loans, three, four, $500 loans to very, very poor. rural farmers or maybe even entrepreneurs to just help them get over the line and they were, the term on these things was really short too, I think.

Yeah. Is that about right? Yeah, so Professor Eunice wrote a book called Banker to the Poor, which really helped catalyze people's understanding of how it worked, but also deeper the underlying problems facing those in abject poverty. So the story goes in 1977, he goes back to Bangladesh to help rebuild the country that gained its freedom from Pakistan. And what he saw as a professor was that people were dying of famine. So he went out and tried to understand why.

He comes to discover that there's people borrowing money from loan sharks. They've got to pay, they get a dollar today, and they've got to give them back $2 at the end of the day, that kind of thing. So he bands together 42 women and gives them a total of $27 to free them from these loan sharks. How many? $27 to 42 women. Yeah. In this case, you got to put in context of Bangladesh. At that point in time, there was women doing the work, weaving baskets, but they were not actually allowed to touch money.

They didn't have a voice. Really? Yeah. So it's a profoundly different context. than we, that anyone can really understand in you in today. So he goes through this process of discovery, you know, can you imagine trying to serve someone that you're not actually allowed to talk to? So he had a student, a female students, I would have to talk to the,

to the women as they built this thing. And flash forward, 20 years later, multiple millions of people in Bangladesh, primarily women are gaining access to small loans, a couple hundred dollars, and they're able to invest, invest, that's a big part of it, and be able to invest in making more money. Huh. So John Mackey says, this is awesome. We should do this.

Hold on. I want to go back to the Bangladesh thing. Women were not allowed to handle money or speak to men. Correct. Quick question. How does the species procreate if women cannot speak to men? I mean, I'm not certainly a student of Bangladesh history, but if you go back to Banker of the Port,

because of Professor Eunice's status, he was a professor, he was not part of their family, the idea that he could just simply go have a conversation with another woman in a rural village was not acceptable. No kidding. So, you know, it's certainly, and I think that's this cultural context that's so important for us to understand and be... That's fascinating to me. I'm going to go read about that now, probably tonight when I have 12 minutes. So they make $27 loan to 42 women, and they find out that just that little amount of money helped. Yeah.

And at the same time, there's groups from all over the world that were starting to explore and experiment with this kind of thing. Because there is one universal truth about people in poverty, whether in Memphis or Austin or rural Guatemala, it's an absence of resource. And money is the most clear. I could not agree more. That is, that is, it's access. It's access to credit, access to good medicine, access to education, access to transportation. We can name a list of a hundred things,

but access is what I've grown to learn is the biggest impediment to getting out of abject poverty. It's just access to things that most of us take for granted. And I think it's a big piece of that, That question, that story, is a deep understanding of what are the limitations to that access. So there's this idea of a triple whammy effect of poverty. It's also that income is often low, but it's not just that it's low, it's highly volatile. And it makes it difficult to pool together lump sums of money.

So those three things together make it extraordinarily difficult. So incomes low, it's volatile, meaning one day, a dollar a day, now, $4 tomorrow, no money for the next three days. How do you plan? Right. How do you budget? So there's no financial literacy. Well, no, and also lack of trust, lack of belief that it's going to be better when it,

you never know. It's always, it's a roller coaster. All right. And what's the third one? The third one is because of the first two, it's hard to get to pool together lump sums of money. Which is why you can't invest, which is why microcredit. Yeah, exactly.

So microcredit addresses those. but it's also things that you're not aware of. Oftentimes there's a great book called Portfolios of the Poor that talks about South Africa and people go into debt for the funerals of their loved ones. So pooling together lumps on somebody to weather storms, whether the low points is really important, as well as not being able to capitalize opportunities

because of the lack of credit, the lack of lump sums, compound all of those things. Good and bad. So interesting. It's, boy, beyond this, beyond the purposes of our conversation. You can fix a lot if you could fix that. So this microcredit thing, you answer the monster.com and the Whole Foods guy likes this whole microcredit idea.

This is a story. It's crazy. So John Mackey meets Muhammad Yunus. Muhammad Yunus, as we can replicate the Greek. Tell us who those people are one more time. So John Mackey is a founding. and CEO of Whole Foods. Mohamed Eunice is the founder

and CEO of Grameen Bank in Bangladesh. So they come together and Muhammad Yunus says we can replicate the Grameen Bank anywhere in the world as long as we have money. John Mackie's like, well, I got money. So they partner to have Whole Foods, now the Foundation, Whole Planet Foundation,

fund all of the necessary capital to build a sustainable replication of Grameen Bank. in Guatemala and Costa Rica. So we're going to take what they learned in Bangladesh about microcredit, and because I've made all this money with Whole Foods, we're going to make Whole What Bank? The foundation they started was called Whole Planet.

The whole planet. I get it. So the foundation created by the success of Whole Foods is now called Old Planet. And we're going to replicate in Costa Rica and Guatemala with microcredit what the success has been in Bangladesh. And how are you balled up in this? They airdrop 10 Bangladeshis from Grameen Bank. Oh, okay.

Into Costa Rica and Guatemala. These guys definitely don't speak Spanish, and English is a little broken as well. So that is their support is bags of cash and like a connection to a university. So they quickly say, well, we've got a problem. Let's hire somebody. Let's hire a resident fixer.

We need a Mexican wrestler from Green Bay. That's what we need. The profile said, have you been in the Mexican wrestling ring? Do you love the Green Bay Packers? Yeah, so I was fortunate to be the right place to the right time. I could not have dreamt of a more ideal situation. And that concludes part one of our conversation with Steve Wanta. And you don't want to miss part two that's now available to listen.

to. Together, guys, we can change this country. But it starts with you. I'll see in part two. Malcolm Gladwell here. This season on Revisionous History, we're going back to the spring of 1988 to a town in northwest Alabama, where a man committed a crime that would spiral out of control. And he said, I've been in prison 24, 25 years. That's probably not long enough. And I didn't kill him. From Revisionous History, this is The Alabama Murders. Listen to Revisionous History, The Alabama Murders on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Yvalongoria. And I'm Maite Gomezrejorn. And this week on our podcast, Hungry for History, we talk oysters, plus the Mianbi Chief stops by. If you're not an oyster lover, don't even tell you. talk to me. Ancient Athenians used to scratch names onto oyster shells to vote politicians into exile. So our word ostracize is related to the word oyster. No way. Bring back the OsterCon. Listen to Hungry for History on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Join me, Danny Trejo in Nocturno, Tales from the Shadow.

An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal, Tales from the Shadows. On the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Atlanta is a spirit. It's not just a city. It's where Cronk was born in a club in the West End.

A four world star, it was five-five-nine. Where preachers go viral, and students at the HBCU turned heartbreak into resurrection. Where Dreamers brought Hollywood to the South, and hustlers bring their visions to create black wealth. Nobody's rushing into relationships with you. I'm Big Rube. Listen to Atlanta is on the I Heart Radio app. Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast. Thanksgiving isn't just about food.

It's a day for us to show up for one another. It's okay not to be okay sometimes. be able to build strength and love within each other. I'm Elia Connie, host of the podcast Family Therapy, a series where real families come together to heal and find hope. I've always wanted us to have therapy, so this is such a beautiful opportunity. Listen to Season 2 of Family Therapy every Wednesday

on the Black Effect Podcast Network, IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast.