Lack of travel has been detrimental to my podcast listening habit. I went from consuming a few dozen per month to nearly zero. On top of that, I think I was burned out with too many technical podcasts and realized that variety is the spice of life.
This year, I’m starting fresh with a blank slate playlist. A friend recommended listening to the Wall Street Journal’s (WSJ) Bad Bets podcast. The first (and currently only) season takes a good, hard look at Enron. I realized that I knew the name Enron, of course, but was a tad too young to have really grok’ed the situation.
The podcast content is binge worthy. Journal reporters John Emshwiller and Rebecca Smith do a fantastic job at breaking down the beginning, middle, end, and aftermath of this massive corporation and the people impacted. As I was listening, I was smacked with similarities to today’s situation, in which so much hype (web3! NFTs! digital real estate!) is emboldening bad money to follow good and creating some slippery financial slopes.
Summary
Supremely well produced podcast with a knowledgeable and interesting host.
Give this podcast a listen if you are at all interested in better understanding:
- How Enron was actually trying to build an information superhighway before we even had broadband, and why it failed.
- The history of corporate greed and the criticality of morality and ethics in business.
- Seeing the warnings signs and red flags leading up to a disadvantageous outcome.
