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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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29 episodes
daily
Avg 12 min
English

Episodes 29

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S1 · E26226
August 14 · 16 min
Business Blooper: The Chip That Passed (Through)
Sometimes the product works exactly as advertised, and that is precisely the problem. On January 24, 1996, the FDA approved olestra (oh-LES-trah), a synthetic fat substitute developed by Procter & Gamble researchers Fred Mattson and Robert Volpenhein, who had originally stumbled onto the molecule in 1968 while researching fats for premature infants. By February 1998, Frito-Lay had licensed the ingredient and launched WOW chips nationally, a fat-free line spanning Lay's, Ruffles, Doritos, and Tostitos. First year sales hit $347 million, making WOW the best-selling new food product in the United States that year. But every bag carried an FDA-mandated warning label that mentioned abdominal cramping and loose stools, late night comedy did the rest, and consumer complaints eventually topped 20,000. Sales dropped by half between 1998 and 2000. The WOW brand was quietly retired in 2004. Olestra eventually found its way into eco-friendly deck stains and industrial lubricants. bsnsBloopers is part of the bsnsDAILYpodcasts lineup from bsnsBasics, hosted by Ron Trucks. New episodes drop every weekday. Follow on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen. Start at www.bsnsDAILYpodcasts.com
S1 · E26225
August 13 · 15 min
August 13, 2026: The Argument That Never Settled
A phrase gets repeated every election cycle that almost nobody can actually define. This episode traces it back to where it started. On August 13, 1981, President Ronald Reagan signed the Economic Recovery Tax Act at his California ranch, cutting the top income tax rate from 70% to 50% and reducing capital gains and corporate taxes, the centerpiece of what became known as supply-side or trickle-down economics. The episode explains how the underlying theory actually works, walks through what his own budget director later admitted about the gap between its public explanation and private goals, and lays out the competing evidence, rising capital gains revenue and falling unemployment on one side, record peacetime deficits on the other, that economists still argue over more than four decades later. 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 · E26224
August 12 · 13 min
August 12, 2026: Two Different Kinds of Genius
A broke mechanic built a better machine in eleven days. It took his lawyer five more years to figure out how anyone could actually buy one. On August 12, 1851, Isaac Singer was granted U.S. Patent No. 8,294 for an improved sewing machine, a design reliable enough to win the patent war that followed and become the foundation of the largest sewing machine company in the world. The machine alone wasn't enough. It took Singer's business partner, lawyer Edward Clark, and his 1856 installment payment plan to make a $100 machine affordable to families earning a fraction of that a year, a financial model that went on to shape how Americans buy cars, appliances, and nearly everything else on credit 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 · E26223
August 11 · 13 min
August 11, 2026: Known for the Wrong Thing
The world called her the most beautiful woman alive. It took fifty-five years for anyone to call her an inventor. On August 11, 1942, actress Hedy Lamarr and composer George Antheil were granted U.S. Patent No. 2,292,387 for a frequency-hopping "Secret Communication System," designed to keep Allied radio-guided torpedoes from being jammed by the enemy. The Navy rejected the invention and classified it for the remainder of the war, and the patent expired before either inventor ever saw a cent from it, even after the military quietly adopted a version of the same principle in 1962. The underlying idea eventually became foundational to Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and GPS, technology billions of people now use every day without knowing where it started. 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 · E26222
August 10 · 14 min
August 10, 2026: Free, Out of Spite
A man who was never allowed to use his own father's name decided, quietly and without explanation, exactly whose name would be remembered instead. On August 10, 1846, President James K. Polk signed the Smithsonian Institution Act into law, formally establishing an institution funded entirely by a stranger. British scientist James Smithson, who died in 1829 having never once visited the United States, left his fortune to America with a single vague condition attached and no stated reason why, and Congress spent eight years, and nearly lost the money entirely to bad investments, figuring out what to build with it. What resulted is now the largest museum and research complex on earth, free to enter since the day it opened. 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 · E26219
August 7 · 15 min
Business Blooper: The Pants That Talked Back
There are product failures, and then there are founder failures. This week's bsnsBloopers has both. On November 5, 2013, Lululemon founder Chip Wilson sat down for a live television interview with Bloomberg TV's Trish Regan and, in the middle of a brand recovery that was actually working, blamed see-through yoga pants on women's bodies. The company had already pulled 17 percent of its inventory, projected $40 to $50 million in lost revenue, and was rebuilding customer trust under CEO Christine Day. Wilson's interview undid months of careful work in a single sentence, and within six months, Day was gone, Wilson had resigned from the board, and Lululemon was rebuilding its entire leadership team. bsnsBloopers is part of the bsnsDAILYpodcasts lineup from bsnsBasics, hosted by Ron Trucks. New episodes drop every weekday. Follow on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen. Start at www.bsnsDAILYpodcasts.com
S1 · E26218
August 6 · 10 min
August 6, 2026: Collaborators Welcome
Two words almost didn't make it into a routine reply on an internet newsgroup, and the internet as we know it might not exist without them. On August 6, 1991, physicist Tim Berners-Lee posted a message to a newsgroup called alt.hypertext, publicly announcing the World Wide Web project for the first time and inviting outside developers to build on what he'd spent two years creating alone at CERN, the European research lab outside Geneva, Switzerland. The decision to open the project rather than protect it, later formalized when CERN placed the Web's code in the public domain in 1993 with no patent attached, cleared the path for the commercial internet that followed within just a few years. 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 · E26217
August 5 · 10 min
August 5, 2026: The Wire Under the Ocean
Four failed attempts and a near bankruptcy didn't stop him. A fifth try, and one soaked, sleepless night, finally did the job. On August 4, 1858, the Niagara reached Trinity Bay, Newfoundland, and the next morning, August 5, the Agamemnon landed the shore end of the cable at Valentia Island, Ireland, completing the first transatlantic telegraph connection. American merchant Cyrus Field had driven the twelve year project through repeated failures and his own company's financial crisis before this attempt finally held, shrinking transatlantic communication from roughly two weeks down to minutes, at least for the few weeks the cable survived before a wiring mistake burned it out for good. 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 · E26216
August 4 · 11 min
August 4, 2026: The Vote Nobody Was Watching
A signature that didn't stamp anything "rejected" turned out to matter more than most people realized at the time. On June 19, 1987, President Reagan vetoed a bill that would have permanently written the Fairness Doctrine into law, and six weeks later, on August 4, 1987, the Federal Communications Commission voted 4 to 0 to abolish the doctrine outright, ending a 38 year old rule that had required broadcasters to present contrasting viewpoints on controversial issues. Less than a year later, Rush Limbaugh's nationally syndicated radio show launched, and a business built entirely on unfiltered opinion took off, eventually growing into a talk radio and cable news economy worth billions of dollars. 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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