We almost had a smartphone in the 90s. Why did it fail?
Episode Date: June 26, 2026In the early 90’s, a company called General Magic began working on a portable device that would allow people to check email, make phone calls, even pl...
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586 episodes transcribedIn the early 90’s, a company called General Magic began working on a portable device that would allow people to check email, make phone calls, even pl...
Prediction markets aren’t new. Election betting was common until the 1940s, then mysteriously faded away.There was an entire political era when party...
Maybe the real monster in the Alien franchise isn’t actually the killer alien. Because behind the acid blood and jump scares is an even more insidious...
The cyber weapon that might have prevented nuclear war.The U.S. and Israel have long been in conflict with Iran over their nuclear development program...
Can the government stop you from cutting down your own tree? In many towns and cities these days, removing a tree now requires a permit. You might hav...
One specific type of affordable housing used to be popular in American cities, kept rents low, then nearly vanished. Is it time to reconsider boarding...
One reason the $70 billion supplement industry is set to double in the next seven years? Lax regulation.On today's show, we tell the story of a centur...
Have you ever walked around a street, mall, or airport and noticed two or three of the same franchise restaurant within walking distance? Why might on...
99% of chemicals in our food right now were added without FDA approval. Many were added in secret, through a sneaky loophole built into the 1958 Food...
Tax avoidance -- that is, legally reducing your tax bill -- is as American as apple pie. But the line between tax avoidance and tax evasion is often a...
How does a poor country become a rich country? There's a simple blueprint — or at least, that's what many economists used to believe. But over the yea...
Note: This episode originally ran in 2023.Do you work more for more money? Or work less for more time? For some, this is the ultimate economic choice....
If you have a credit card, hope to buy a house, or just want stable grocery prices – let’s talk about the future of Fed independence!It’s impossibly i...
Recently, a listener wrote in with a question about OPEC and oil prices. She was prepping for a camping trip… thinking about how much it costs to fil...
Today the WNBA season tips off, but Dallas Wings veteran forward Alysha Clark has already won a high-stakes competition. She – and a Nobel Prize winni...
Curt Flood was the best center fielder in baseball and one of the game’s highest paid players. He took the St. Louis Cardinals to the World Series thr...
In the world of commercial publishing, there are few crowning achievements more coveted than a place on the New York Times Best Seller List. But how d...
It’s way more than fuel costs that pushed Spirit Airlines to the brink of liquidation and led President Trump to muse about “buying” them. Many low co...
At one point in history, one U.S. company monopolized the rare earths industry. Then China took over the industry. Can the U.S. bring it back?Rare ear...
We talk with Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark and Chief Economist at Redfin Daryl Fairweather about two of the biggest issues of our time: AI and housi...