Too Much Money

Are billionaires so dead inside that they need to risk their lives just to feel alive again?  Not all of them. Probably.  This week we’re diving and climbing and rocketing inside the world of extreme luxury and adventure travel where the insanely wealthy pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to travel to the depths of the ocean, outer space, Antarctica and the highest, most remote peaks o...

Karlie Kloss is just the latest billionaire (by marriage) who thought it might be fun to start buying magazines. But billionaires' track record with the media is ... not great. In this ep we discuss the various billionaires (Jeff Bezos, Patrick Soon-Shiong, Mort Zuckerman, Sam Zell, etc.) who have bought media properties, what happened next, and who suffered (hint: not them!). Email us! toomuchmon...

Are we being invaded by aliens? Jo thought so when she saw a massive string of bright lights jet across the night sky. But alas, it wasn't aliens — it was Elon Musk. The Musker has been releasing satellites by the dozen and if you don't know what you are looking at they are downright terrifying. Here to explain this latest venture from the infamous billionaire is guest host Nick Ast...

Robert Bigelow made his fortune in budget hotels (with some really intense bad reviews). But that business was all a means to an end for Bigelow. All he ever wanted (since he was a little kid staring up at the stars) was to go to outer space. And he tried to make that dream a reality by offering to make NASA some budget motels on the moon. When that didn't work out her switched his focus to fundin...

There was so much billionaire news over the last few weeks that we needed to do a news-y episode to go over it all. First we have yet another billionaire buying up land in Hawaii for somewhat mysterious reasons, and then we cover a three-day, $120 million PRE-wedding party in India. Finally, we have a story about a billionaire who is actually doing something to help the world. Email us at toomuchm...

Today’s episode tells the tale of the worst party ever thrown. This is what happens when a Gilded Age millionaire has too much money to spend to celebrate the grand opening of his fancy new stables. Dinner guests were made to endure a multi-course dinner while strapped in the saddle atop horses lifted into a fourth floor Manhattan ballroom. But we promise, it gets even weirder.  Email us your...

In 2010, a man named Forrest Fenn published a memoir that contained a 24-verse poem that, he said, contained nine clues about the whereabouts of what he said was a buried treasure worth $2 million. For more than a decade, thousands of people tried to find his treasure with no luck. When treasure hunters started dying, people began wondering why he didn't call the whole thing off. And then someone...

The Eighties were a wacky time in aviation history. Deregulation ushered in a variety of kooky airlines that catered to all kinds of crowds, from a smokers' airline to fancy-pants first-class-only carriers. Even Donald Trump had his own airline, complete with gold-plated bathrooms. But Trump wasn't the only one decking out planes to look like one of Hugh Hefner's mansions. Casino and movie studio...

In 2012, Oracle founder and billionaire Larry Ellison bought 98 percent of the Hawaiian island of Lanai for $300 million. The 3,000 or so people who live there were initially hopeful that life there would improve, but now, 12 years later, they're worried about the changes he's made and how life on the island they call home may never be the same. Email us at  toomuchmoneypodcast@gmail.com ! To...

The celebrated aviator Amelia Earhart is better known for how she disappeared than the incredible feats she accomplished alive. Her disappearance has long captivated explorers, governments and naturally billionaires. And as we know, billionaires love to find things other people can’t afford to find. Millions have been spent searching for any clue of what happened to Earhart and just last month a n...

Jo and Doree are out reporting a story this week, so today we are bringing you an episode of a show that we love called Infamous: Inside America's Biggest Scandals. Infamous covers scandals of all sorts, but many of those scandals have to do with very rich people...because as longtime listeners of this show know, rich people are always behaving badly. With the meteoric rise of Google in the early...

Rick Singer's "side door into college" wasn't all just bad water polo Photoshop. He also had an elaborate, long-running scheme to get rich kids higher SAT and ACT scores. And it all went through his fake charity, Key Worldwide Foundation. You'll have more context if you listen to last week's episode, Varsity Blues Part 1. Email us at  toomuchmoneypodcast@gmail.com ! Too Much Money is hosted a...

Getting into college is much less stressful when your parents are paying a college consultant to pretend that you're on the crew team when you've never rowed in your life. Or paying that same college consultant to get someone else to take your SATs for you. That's right — this week we're going deep on the Varsity Blues college admissions scandal. Come along as we discuss the LA dad who inadvertent...

What’s the gift that keeps on giving and giving and giving? Immortality of course, and it is the eternal brass ring that so many billionaires are trying to get their grubby hands on. Join us as we tell the tale of centi-millionaire Bryan Johnson’s efforts to reverse his biological age. This real life Benjamin Button takes more than a hundred supplements a day, only eats in the morning and gets inj...

The $270 million compound that Mark Zuckerberg is building on the Hawaiian island of Kauai includes a 5,000 square foot luxury bunker, where he and his family will presumably be able to ride out the end of the world. This week, we go deep on why billionaires are obsessed with prepping for the apocalypse, what a $60 million bunker looks like, and why billionaires have decided that New Zealand will...

Why are billionaires obsessed with bringing animals back from extinction? Have none of them ever seen Jurassic Park? Do they not know the very dire consequences here? Various billionaires (and multimillionaire celebrities like the Hemsworth brothers and Paris Hilton) have invested in trying to bring back the Woolly Mammoth, the Tasmanian Tiger and the Dodo. Sometimes they cloak these quests in an...

Madelaine Brockway came out of nowhere and went viral for her $59 million wedding that broke the Internet. The car dealership heiress that no one had ever heard of flew all her guests privately to Paris, had a pre-wedding get together at the Chanel Store, did her rehearsal dinner at the Paris Opera house, treated folks to an overnight stay at the Palace of Versailles, and hosted a private Maroon 5...

It is not cheap to build an exact replica of the Titanic. Estimates are a cool $500 million. But that did not deter eccentric billionaire Clive Palmer, a man so obsessed with the Titanic that he is desperate to build an exact replica of the ship that will sail across the ocean carrying passengers who may or may not be wearing period costumes. But is any project associated with the ill-fated ship d...

Jeff Bezos commissioned a $500 million "sailing yacht" from a company in Rotterdam. There was just one problem: the boat didn't fit under one of the city's bridges. Too Much Money is hosted and produced by Jo Piazza and Doree Shafrir. Music by Lisa Brenner. Email us at toomuchmoneypodcast@gmail.com. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

When "Bond King" Bill Gross bought his girlfriend a $1 million sculpture by the famed glass artist Dale Chihuly to display in the backyard of their Laguna Beach home, he had no idea that it would set off a bitter, years-long feud with his neighbors over their view of the Pacific Ocean. This is a story of what happens when the ultra-wealthy go to war... with each other. Too Much Money is hosted and...

In 2007 two A-list celebrities went head-to-head in a heated auction for a rare Tyrannasaurus skull. And only one would emerge the winner. That auction was only one small piece of a massive global investigation into the illegal markets where very rich folks buy and sell illegal dinosaur fossils to decorate their homes and real estate development offices. Because at the end of the day nothing conve...