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bsnsHistory

bsnsBasics

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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S1 · E26268
Friday · 12 min
Business Blooper: The Machine That Was Supposed to Replace the Car
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 America after months of secretive hype that had tech titans like Steve Jobs and venture capitalist John Doerr predicting it would reshape transportation itself. A five thousand dollar price tag, two major safety recalls, a very public presidential tumble, and city bans across the country kept it from ever reaching that promise. The company survived on tourism, security, and warehouse use, changed owners twice, and ended production entirely in 2020, having sold a fraction of what Kamen once projected. From bsnsBasics, this is bsnsBloopers, the weekly podcast that unpacks the business decisions that sounded smart, until they weren't. Hosted by Ron Trucks. New episodes every Friday. Another lesson from bsnsBloopers, the podcast that proves even smart ideas can blow up. Visit us at www.bsnsDAILYpodcasts.com
S1 · E26267
Thursday · 9 min
Eighteen Thousand Dollars in a Hotel Room
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 cash in hand. On September 24, 1933, Gerald MacGuire visited Butler in Newark, New Jersey, during a National Guard reunion, and threw $18,000 in thousand dollar bills onto the bed, the latest in a series of approaches that would eventually grow into an alleged plan backed by wealthy industrialists to install Butler as a figurehead leader over a private veterans' army. Butler testified about the plot before Congress the following year, naming financial backers connected to J.P. Morgan and the du Pont family, though no one was ever charged. The episode traces the meeting, the plan behind it, and the quiet way the story faded from public attention. From bsnsHistory, the daily podcast about the moments when business quietly reshaped the world. Written and hosted by Ron Trucks. Research and editing by Rodney Russ. Sound design by Angela Cahoy. Music by Cody Martin and Soundstripe. For more daily business stories, visit www.bsnsDAILYpodcasts.com
S1 · E26266
Wednesday · 10 min
The Speech That Rewrote Political Crisis Management
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 Time, Senator Richard Nixon delivered a live, unscripted half hour broadcast from the El Capitan Theatre in Los Angeles, defending himself against allegations of a secret $18,000 campaign fund and famously refusing to give up his family's cocker spaniel, Checkers. The speech reached tens of millions of Americans directly, bypassing a skeptical press entirely, and became the founding case study for modern crisis communication, a tool that served Nixon far less kindly eight years later against John F. Kennedy. This is bsnsHistory, the daily podcast about the moments when business quietly reshaped the world. Written and hosted by Ron Trucks. Research and editing by Rodney Russ. Sound design by Angela Cahoy. Music by Cody Martin and Soundstripe. For more daily business stories, visit www.bsnsDAILYpodcasts.com
S1 · E26265
Tuesday · 10 min
The Coffee Shop That Built the American Business Women's Association
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 shop with three working women, Shirley Cupp, Irma Beisel, and Frances Stuckey, and pitched an idea he couldn't stop thinking about: a professional organization open to women across every occupation, not just one trade. By the end of the conversation, the four of them had incorporated the American Business Women's Association. The organization's first chapter chartered just two months later, and it grew into a national network offering education, mentorship, and millions of dollars in scholarships to women in business, a legacy formally recognized decades later when Congress and President Reagan designated September 22 as American Business Women's Day. From bsnsBasics, I'm Ron Trucks, and this is bsnsHistory, the daily podcast about the moments when business quietly reshaped the world. Written and hosted by Ron Trucks. Research and editing by Rodney Russ. Sound design by Angela Cahoy. Music by Cody Martin and Soundstripe. For more daily business stories, visit www.bsnsDAILYpodcasts.com
S1 · E26264
Monday · 12 min
The Gamble That Learned to Fly
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 that became the CH-47 Chinook took its first flight, the product of Vertol Aircraft Corporation's high-risk bet on two simultaneous, self-funded helicopter programs, a decision that led directly to Boeing acquiring the company just a year earlier. Two decades later, a single Royal Air Force Chinook nicknamed Bravo November became Britain's only heavy-lift helicopter during the Falklands War after the rest of the fleet was lost when the ship carrying it was sunk, and the aircraft went on to move over two thousand troops and 550 tons of cargo in eighteen days. The same design is still doing the job today, pulling stranded hikers off Mount Whitney in 2021 and reaching climbers on Longs Peak in February 2026 when other helicopters couldn't fly. This is bsnsHistory, the daily podcast about the moments when business quietly reshaped the world. Written and hosted by Ron Trucks. Research and editing by Rodney Russ. Sound design by Angela Cahoy. Music by Cody Martin and Soundstripe. For more daily business stories, visit www.bsnsDAILYpodcasts.com
S1 · E26261
September 18 · 12 min
Business Blooper: Buried by a Bonding Rule
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 into the second largest funeral home company in North America, buying up small, family-owned funeral homes across the United States and Canada while deliberately keeping their local names on the door. In 1995, a contract dispute with Biloxi funeral home operator Jeremiah O'Keefe went to trial in Jackson, Mississippi, and a jury returned a $500 million verdict, the largest in state history. Unable to post the $625 million appeal bond required under Mississippi law within seven days, Loewen settled for $175 million, a sum the debt-heavy company could not absorb. The Loewen Group filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in June 1999. From bsnsBasics, this is bsnsBloopers, the weekly podcast that unpacks the business decisions that sounded smart, until they weren't. Hosted by Ron Trucks. New episodes every Friday. Another lesson from bsnsBloopers, the podcast that proves even smart ideas can blow up. Visit us at www.bsnsDAILYpodcasts.com
S1 · E26260
September 17 · 10 min
When Fans Renamed A Spacecraft
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 September 17, 1976, NASA rolled out its first Space Shuttle orbiter, Enterprise, at Rockwell International's facility in Palmdale, California, with the original Star Trek cast in attendance. The name change came after Bjo Trimble, who had organized the 1968 letter-writing campaign that saved Star Trek from cancellation, led a similar effort urging President Gerald Ford to rename the shuttle after the fictional starship. Over 200,000 letters later, Ford ordered the change, giving NASA a wave of public enthusiasm it never had to pay for. This is bsnsHistory, the daily podcast about the moments when business quietly reshaped the world. Written and hosted by Ron Trucks. Research and editing by Rodney Russ. Sound design by Angela Cahoy. Music by Cody Martin and Soundstripe. For more daily business stories, visit www.bsnsDAILYpodcasts.com
S1 · E26259
September 16 · 10 min
Two Thousand Dollars and an Empire
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. On September 16, 1908, William Crapo Durant filed paperwork in Trenton, New Jersey, incorporating General Motors for a modest $2,000, less than two weeks later, the new company had raised more than $12 million in stock and begun absorbing rival automakers one after another. Durant, who'd made his first fortune in horse-drawn carriages, applied the same playbook to cars: buy up the competition rather than out-invent it. The episode follows that strategy from its fast start through the bankers who forced Durant out in 1910, his comeback through Chevrolet, and the empire that outlasted him. From bsnsHistory, the daily podcast about the moments when business quietly reshaped the world. Written and hosted by Ron Trucks. Research and editing by Rodney Russ. Sound design by Angela Cahoy. Music by Cody Martin and Soundstripe. For more daily business stories, visit www.bsnsDAILYpodcasts.com
S1 · E26258
September 15 · 10 min
Spinks Kept the Belt. ABC Wanted Ali.
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 that rematch said everything about who the real draw was. On September 15, 1978, Ali faced reigning heavyweight champion Leon Spinks at the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans, in a rematch ABC paid a record $5.3 million to broadcast live. Ali won a unanimous decision after fifteen rounds, becoming the first fighter in history to win the heavyweight title three times, while the broadcast itself drew an estimated 90 million viewers across roughly 80 countries. The episode traces how the media deal around the fight treated Ali, not the defending champion, as the true commercial center of the event. From bsnsHistory, the daily podcast about the moments when business quietly reshaped the world. Written and hosted by Ron Trucks. Research and editing by Rodney Russ. Sound design by Angela Cahoy. Music by Cody Martin and Soundstripe. For more daily business stories, visit www.bsnsDAILYpodcasts.com
S1 · E26257
September 14 · 10 min
The Eleven Days Parliament Had to Delete
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 the Julian to the Gregorian calendar, a change championed in Parliament by Lord Chesterfield, whose smoother public performance won him credit for work that actually belonged to the mathematician George Parker, Earl of Macclesfield. Wednesday, September 2, was followed directly by Thursday, September 14, deleting eleven calendar days overnight and forcing Parliament to quickly pass a second law protecting wages, rents, and interest payments from the gap. The famous stories of angry mobs rioting in the streets don't hold up, that legend traces back to a satirical painting of an unrelated election two years later, but the disruption to everyday financial life was real, and it's part of why the UK's tax year still starts on April 6 today. This is bsnsHistory, the daily podcast about the moments when business quietly reshaped the world. Written and hosted by Ron Trucks. Research and editing by Rodney Russ. Sound design by Angela Cahoy. Music by Cody Martin and Soundstripe. For more daily business stories, visit www.bsnsDAILYpodcasts.com
S1 · E26254
September 11 · 14 min
Business Blooper: A Shortcut Straight Into the Desert
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 iPhone. Within days, the new app was riddled with errors, mislabeled landmarks, warped roads, entire towns missing from the map. By December, the glitch had turned dangerous, with Victoria Police in Australia rescuing multiple drivers who had been directed into a remote national park while trying to reach a town forty three miles away. CEO Tim Cook issued a public apology on September 28, an almost unheard of move for Apple, and the company spent years rebuilding its mapping data from scratch. From bsnsBasics, this is bsnsBloopers, the weekly podcast that unpacks the business decisions that sounded smart, until they weren't. Hosted by Ron Trucks. New episodes every Friday. Another lesson from bsnsBloopers, the podcast that proves even smart ideas can blow up. Visit us at www.bsnsDAILYpodcasts.com
S1 · E26253
September 10 · 11 min
The Wreck That Built a Subway
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 history. On November 1, 1918, the Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company pressed an untrained dispatcher named Edward Luciano into service after its motormen walked out on strike, and his train derailed in a Brooklyn tunnel, killing at least ninety three people. The wreck became the political origin point for Mayor John Hylan's crusade against privately run transit, and on September 10, 1932, the city opened the first line of its own Independent Subway System, built and operated without the private companies whose decisions had proven so costly. This is bsnsHistory, the daily podcast about the moments when business quietly reshaped the world. Written and hosted by Ron Trucks. Research and editing by Rodney Russ. Sound design by Angela Cahoy. Music by Cody Martin and Soundstripe. For more daily business stories, visit www.bsnsDAILYpodcasts.com
S1 · E26252
September 9 · 10 min
The Bug That Got the Credit Wrong
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 Mark II computer really did find a moth jammed in a relay, and it really did get taped into the machine's logbook with the note "first actual case of bug being found." What doesn't hold up is the rest of the legend. The word "bug" had been used by engineers for decades before that afternoon, including by Thomas Edison in 1878, and the logbook entry itself was likely written by someone other than Hopper. What actually happened is that she told the story for the next 45 years until it became permanently attached to her name, a small case study in how a good story from a credible source can outrun the facts. This is bsnsHistory, the daily podcast about the moments when business quietly reshaped the world. Written and hosted by Ron Trucks. Research and editing by Rodney Russ. Sound design by Angela Cahoy. Music by Cody Martin and Soundstripe. For more daily business stories, visit www.bsnsDAILYpodcasts.com
S1 · E26251
September 8 · 9 min
Beating Donahue, Then Buying Herself Back
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 syndication, two years after Oprah Winfrey had already beaten Phil Donahue in his own hometown market of Chicago. The national launch repeated the pattern almost immediately, but the real fortune didn't come from the syndication deal itself. It came two years later, when Winfrey formed Harpo Productions and took ownership of the show that had made her famous, becoming the first woman in television history to own the production company behind her own nationally syndicated talk show. This is bsnsHistory, the daily podcast about the moments when business quietly reshaped the world. Written and hosted by Ron Trucks. Research and editing by Rodney Russ. Sound design by Angela Cahoy. Music by Cody Martin and Soundstripe. For more daily business stories, visit www.bsnsDAILYpodcasts.com
S1 · E26250
September 7 · 10 min
The Bank That Wouldn't Open The Safe
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 First National Bank of Northfield, Minnesota, and acting cashier Joseph Lee Heywood refused to open the bank's actually-unlocked safe, falsely claiming it was on a time lock. Armed townspeople converged on the scene, killing two gang members and effectively ending the gang's criminal career for good, though Heywood was shot and killed as the robbers fled. More than 450 banks across the country later contributed to a fund honoring his sacrifice, a moment this episode also uses to examine how far modern bank policy and business insurance have moved from what Heywood chose to do that day. This is bsnsHistory, the daily podcast about the moments when business quietly reshaped the world. Written and hosted by Ron Trucks. Research and editing by Rodney Russ. Sound design by Angela Cahoy. Music by Cody Martin and Soundstripe. For more daily business stories, visit www.bsnsDAILYpodcasts.com
S1 · E26247
September 4 · 16 min
Business Blooper: When the 'Hot Donut' Light Went Out
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 public on the NASDAQ under CEO Scott Livengood, launching one of the most anticipated food IPOs in American history. The stock hit $50 a share and split twice. What followed was an aggressive expansion from 95 stores in 11 states to 367 stores in 38 states, plus international markets, combined with a push into gas stations, supermarkets, and convenience stores that stripped the brand of the scarcity that had made it magnetic for sixty years. By 2005 the stock had collapsed to under $5, the company had filed for bankruptcy protection, and the SEC had opened an investigation into accounting irregularities that eventually resulted in settlements with three former top executives. The brand that had been built on the promise of a warm doughnut you had to seek out had become just another product on a shelf. bsnsBloopers is part of the bsnsDAILYpodcasts lineup from bsnsBasics, hosted by Ron Trucks. Find more at www.bsnsDAILYpodcasts.com
S1 · E26246
September 3 · 10 min
The Day An Entire Country Switched Sides
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, switching the entire country from driving on the left side of the road to the right, after years of planning by a dedicated government commission and a public information campaign reaching every household. The change addressed a dangerous mismatch, since roughly 90% of Swedish cars were already built for right-hand traffic, and aligned the country with its only two land neighbors, Norway and Finland. Accident rates dropped sharply in the immediate aftermath before gradually returning close to pre-switch levels within two years, a genuinely mixed but historically significant outcome. This is bsnsHistory, the daily podcast about the moments when business quietly reshaped the world. Written and hosted by Ron Trucks. Research and editing by Rodney Russ. Sound design by Angela Cahoy. Music by Cody Martin and Soundstripe. For more daily business stories, visit www.bsnsDAILYpodcasts.com
S1 · E26245
September 2 · 9 min
The Machine That Never Closed
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 the credit. On September 2, 1969, the first ATM in the United States debuted at a Chemical Bank branch in Rockville Centre, New York, promising customers a bank that would "open at 9 a.m. and never close again." Inventor Don Wetzel's magnetic card and PIN system removed the need for a human teller from a transaction for the first time, a shift that grew into more than 1.8 million machines nationwide within a few decades. Credit for the invention stayed contested for years, until the Smithsonian formally recognized Wetzel in 1995, presenting him with an ATM card bearing his own name and a number that had never belonged to anyone else. This is bsnsHistory, the daily podcast about the moments when business quietly reshaped the world. Written and hosted by Ron Trucks. Research and editing by Rodney Russ. Sound design by Angela Cahoy. Music by Cody Martin and Soundstripe. For more daily business stories, visit www.bsnsDAILYpodcasts.com
S1 · E26244
September 1 · 11 min
The Plumbing Company That Broke A Bank Monopoly
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 1, 1799, the Bank of the Manhattan Company opened for business at 40 Wall Street, born from a charter Aaron Burr had written months earlier under the banner of bringing clean water to New York City after a deadly yellow fever epidemic. Buried inside that charter, and championed unknowingly by his own rival, was a clause allowing surplus capital to be used for banking, breaking Hamilton's Federalist party's grip on the city's finances. The rivalry it deepened outlived them both, and decades later, both men's banking institutions merged into the same modern company, JPMorgan Chase. This is bsnsHistory, the daily podcast about the moments when business quietly reshaped the world. Written and hosted by Ron Trucks. Research and editing by Rodney Russ. Sound design by Angela Cahoy. Music by Cody Martin and Soundstripe. For more daily business stories, visit www.bsnsDAILYpodcasts.com
S1 · E26243
August 31 · 11 min
August 31, 2026: Inventing The Job As They Went
(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 handed a killer nobody had the tools to catch. On August 31, 1888, Mary Ann Nichols was found murdered in Whitechapel, London, the first confirmed victim of the killer known as Jack the Ripper. With no fingerprint system, no crime lab, and no established protocol for the crimes they faced, Scotland Yard's detectives improvised under enormous public pressure, producing the first documented criminal profile, early crime scene photography, and a stalled decision over funding bloodhound tracking dogs that proved they worked. The killer was never caught, but the methods invented under that pressure quietly became the foundation of modern criminal investigation. This is bsnsHistory, the daily podcast about the moments when business quietly reshaped the world. Written and hosted by Ron Trucks. Research and editing by Rodney Russ. Sound design by Angela Cahoy. Music by Cody Martin and Soundstripe. For more daily business stories, visit www.bsnsDAILYpodcasts.com

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