Corporate Gossip

America's pastimes: Baseball and Fraud!  What happens when a bunch of fleece-vested jabronis take over a Major League Baseball team? Becca and Adam hop the fence at the stadium formerly known as Enron field and bring you the tea from the front-office of the Houston Astros.  Two years after the Astros won the World Series, the Athletic dropped a bombshell: the team had cheated. The public fallout w...

If you thought Sumner Redstone was a degenerate, just WAIT until you meet his pervy protege, Les Moonves!  CBS CEO Les Moonves, aka "Mr. TV" is one of the most powerful men in Hollywood. He transformed CBS from a sleepy granny network into a ratings powerhouse with shows like Survivor, Big Brother, Criminal Minds, and The Big Bang Theory. The business part of this story is one Cheezy Blaster away...

The Paramount / Viacom story is just like Bravo's Summer House, but SCARIER!  Our main character, Paramount CEO Sumner Redstone, is a horny teenager trapped in the body of a crusty old billionaire. At 92, despite being barely conscious, he was still chairman of TWO publicly traded companies. This real life  Weekend at Bernie's scheme was made possible by a group of executive-level lowlifes who too...

Insys was the startup unicorn of the opioid crisis, and boy did they know how to party.  Becca & Adam meet Insys CEO John Kapoor and his rowdy band of crooked pharmaceutical reps as they slither their way through doctors offices across the country, pushing their marquee product: Fentanyl! The shady sales reps unleashed the powerful opioid on unsuspecting patients and bribed their doctors to increa...

IT'S A BONUS EPISODE, BROTHER!  Becca and Adam talk with the author of Ringmaster, Josie Riesman Read Ringmaster by Josie Riesman Follow Josie on Instagram , her website josie.zone , or the book website Josie's article mentioned in the interview:  Wrestling turned me cis, then it turned me trans

Welcome back brother!! Season 4 is here and ready to SMACKDOWN! WWE style. Binge ALL of Season 4 NOW on Patreon! We've seen this story before - a deeply traumatized child inherits their father's business and fills the void left by the adults that failed them with, what else… MONEY!!!! Rather than spend time examining his emotional shortcomings, Vince McMahon creates an alter ego, Mr. McMahon, to l...

It's the Season 3 Finale! We answer listener questions and meet the Yogurt King of New York:  Chobani's founder, Hamdi Ulkaya. From nomadic Turkish farmer to millionaire milk mogul, Ulkaya became known as the Anti-CEO, prioritizing people over profit and creating one of the fastest growing food companies in America.  Correction: We said the Chobani Idaho factory was in Idaho falls. It is actually...

In 2017 Carlos Ghosn was on top of the world, he was a Japanese national hero, renowned for bringing Nissan back to life from the brink of failure. His face was on the cover of magazines, his story was depicted in Manga, he even carried the torch at the Olympics in his home country of Brazil. His sudden arrest in 2018 for financial crimes was an unexpected twist in his story that made him the cent...

Becca is joined by Corporate Gossip startup correspondent Aaron Cohn to dip our tube-socked toes into the FTX trial. We meet Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), a rumpled 28-year-old-grown-adult-boy-genius who built a $40 billion crypto empire in less than three years. But his meteoric rise to crypto kingpin was followed quickly by his fall to the bottom of shit-coin mountain.  And now, SBF is facing up to 1...

A very haunted episode of the Corporate Gossip Podcast! Becca and adam talk about the House of Villains that is Pacific Gas and Electric. The collection of CEOs that have lead the utility company over the past two decades are are more dubious than Omarosa and more dimwitted than Jax Taylor. On the upside, this episode should cure even the most chronic cases of imposter syndrome.  Pictures & links...

It's hard to talk about corporate gossip without talking about McKinsey. They're everywhere! They advise the biggest companies in every industry in practically every company in America (90% of the Fortune 100 companies use Mckinsey). From Las Vegas Casinos to the Vatican, McKinsey consultants, armed with their Thinkbooks and Tumi rollerbags, dispense their advice on maximizing the bottom line unde...

This is part two of a two part episode.  This week, Billy Koch turns into a corporate vigilante, as he takes the Department of Justice and the FBI on a private tour of the grounds where all the Koch corporate secrets are buried. We then tell the story of courtroom fight as dramatic as a Beverly Hills housewives reunion, with siblings rehashing decades-old conflicts and clawing at their share of bi...

The only thing more toxic than the emissions spewing from the smokestacks at Koch industries are the relationships between the four adult heirs to the family fortune. This story has EVERYTHING: court battles, private investigators, homosexual blackmail, ANNA NICOLE SMITH, sibling rivalry, and libertarian summer camp! Join Becca and Adam as they wade into the stinky, polluted waters of the Koch fam...

David Zaslav is having the worst summer ever. He was heckled by thousands of graduates during his Boston University commencement address, publically shamed for holding a hunger games style gala in france, and had to fire his best friend! Oh and to top it all off, all of the workers he extracts his wealth from are on strike. Why doesn't anyone want to work anymore!!  Pictures & links on our substac...

Content warning: this episode references child abuse and suicide Ted Turner has more BDE in his pencil mustache than Zuck and Musk combined.  In the span of 5 years he captained a champion sailing yacht through the deadly celtic sea, pulled out an underdog win in the America's cup, bought two professional sports teams, and created the first ever 24-hour news network: CNN. His life is what LinkedIn...

Bonus Episode!!  It's like Jaws if everyone in Jaws worked for Jaws! It's the true story of Rupert Murdoch's main hustle (News Corp) and his side hustle (emotionally and financially manipulating his children). We trace Rupert's (aka RuMu) rise from under the thumb of his father, the original Murdoch Megalomaniac, to become an Australian media mogul. Then, he journeys to the UK and the US, leaving...

SEASON 2 FINALE!! Thanks for your support this season, we'll be back with Season 3 later this summer!!  Don't forget to rate and review this podcast. Becca and Adam flew close to the sun last week and decided to end the season on a high note. We answer some listener questions and crown our 2023 Corporate Cutie before getting into some feel-good Corporate Gossip. The Costco story (18:45) is straigh...

Don't forget to rate and review this podcast!!  This is a true Corporate Gossip Exclusive: The ONLY comparative exploration of Enron and Vanderpump Rules.  On a summer day in 2012 in a restaurant garden in Weho, waitress Schena Shay confronts Housewife Brandi Glanville about the rumors of infidelity surrounding Brandi's husband, Eddie Cibrian. Narratively, this scene breaks the seam between the wo...

A SUPERSIZED EPISODE!! Two pods in one!!!  Jack Welch is our collective Corporate Villain origin story. Potentially the most famous American CEO, Welch, like so many of the leaders we cover on this pod, possesses a dangerous combination of ruthlessness and incompetency. Adam and Becca trace his meteoric rise and salacious downfall before passing the reins of turd mountain (GE) to a series of doome...

If Theresa Giudice opened a mediocre fast casual sandwich shop it would look like Subway restaurants. Founded in part by a 17 year old from the Bronx named Fred Deluca, Subway would become the world's largest fast-food chain. But while Deluca's family was raking in that sweet meatball money, their franchisees were in honey ham hell. Once the sandwich king, Subway now faces serious lawsuits and FTC...

This episode is Not Safe For Work / Your Harvard MBA class  Professional Canadian... sorry, Professional COMEDIAN,  Nathan Macintosh joins Becca to fix capitalism. It's so easy it literally took us less than an hour guys. We discuss a few interesting proposals to address capitalism's systemic problems, AND plan the first EVER Corporate Gossip Cruise / Davos for the rest of us.  Don't forget to rat...

Join Becca and Adam on a journey that starts in in a smoky Texas hotel lobby in 1967. We'll pass trough a decomposing sportatorium off the Dallas freeway in 1992 and end at a contentious company sponsored JoJo concert in 2022. Once a shining star in the skies over the Texas Plains, Southwest experienced a slow and then sudden descent after the departure of it's distinctive founder. Executive would...

It's a bank run, dummies! The SVB collapse is true corporate gossip catnip, and we couldn't resist bringing you this ~very special~ episode about the biggest corporate shitshow of the year (so far). Aaron Cohn , business professor and scorned ex-lover of venture capital, joins Becca to recap the bank's meltdown and subsiquent VC temper tantrum. Aaron is fresh off the plane from SXSW and ready to s...

Boeing is the quintessential american company. For decades it was the destination of choice for America's brightest minds in engineering. Pilots revered the institution, "if it aint Boeing, I'm not going," they'd often say. But by the turn of the century, Boeing's engineering supremacy was replaced with a relentless devotion to shareholder value. Passengers... you can kick rocks! Boeing execs have...

Don't forget to rate and review this podcast!!  Carlos Watson has it all: an Ivy League pedigree, an electric personality, and a media empire called "Ozy." There's only one problem… Watson is a prolific bullshit artist. When he and his co-founder are caught catfishing Goldman Sachs executives, his empire begins to crumble and his throne of lies is exposed. The Ozy story is truly wild and includes...