StartUp Podcast

Does climate change freak you out? Want to know what we, collectively, can do about it? Us too. How to Save a Planet is a podcast that asks the big questions: what do we need to do to solve the climate crisis, and how do we get it done? Join us, journalist Alex Blumberg and scientist and policy nerd Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, as we scour the Earth for solutions, talk to people who are making a difference, ask hard questions, crack dumb jokes and — episode by episode — figure out how to build the future we want.

We’re sharing the first episode of Motherhacker. It’s a fiction podcast about a mother who gets involved in an identity theft ring in order to support her family. The series stars Carrie Coon, Pedro Pascal, Alan Cumming, Lucas Hedges, Tavi Gevinson and Alex Goldman.

Normally, being the mayor of Dayton, Ohio, means paying attention to everyday issues, from garbage pickups to municipal budgets. But in the early morning hours of August 4, 2019, a gunman opened fire at a downtown bar in the city, and Nan Whaley’s role as mayor immediately shifted. She found herself thrust into the national spotlight as all eyes turned to Dayton. And it wasn't long before she was face-to-face with President Donald Trump.

When Desmond Meade got out of prison after serving time for a nonviolent felony, he was homeless and wrestling with addiction. A decade later, he started a campaign that very few people thought was winnable: amending the Florida constitution to restore voting rights to people with felony convictions. His unusual path to success on this politicized issue? Avoid politics, and appeal to principles.

Jonathan Vaughters was a member of the famed USPS pro cycling team when his teammate Lance Armstrong won the first of a record-breaking seven straight Tours de France. While fans were awed and inspired by the victories, Jonathan knew there was something else fueling those wins: performance enhancing drugs — something the entire team was using, including himself. The deception weighed heavy on his conscience, and Jonathan found himself at a crossroads: live with the lie or come clean and become a traitor to his friends, colleagues, and the most powerful man in cycling, Lance Armstrong.

Ever since he was young, Shane McAnally knew he wanted to be a country music star. But as a gay man, he didn’t fit the Nashville mold, and so he hid his true identity for years as he struggled to break through. Little did he know that coming out would prove the key to his success.  We created a playlist of Shane McAnally hits, from artists like Kenny Chesney and Kacey Musgraves. You can find it at https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0ixldv7V7QUegFLYo3k5RN?si=Slqyo5ypQO6LiRydT-PbTQ

Aline Brosh McKenna got her big break as the screenwriter of The Devil Wears Prada. But even after successful box office hits and many years in Hollywood, she found herself having to compromise her vision over and over again. So she took matters into her own hands.

Janice Bryant Howroyd’s company started in the front of a rug shop with just a phone, a fax machine, and a lot of hustle. 40 years later, that company is a huge multinational serving some of the biggest Fortune 500 companies in the world. It earns over a billion dollars in revenue, making Janice the first African-American woman to start and run a billion dollar business. But her journey to CEO wasn’t an easy one. Janice talks with Alex about the people who encouraged her down that path, and her realization that being brilliant and owning your brilliance are two different things.

Comedian Nick Kroll became a star by playing a cast of over-the-top characters like Bobby Bottleservice and Gil Faizon. But for years he was careful to keep his own story out of his comedy. Now, with his hit show Big Mouth, Nick is taking on his most challenging material yet: his adolescence. 

This week, we’re sharing the first episode of Esther Perel’s new show How’s Work? In it, the couples therapist behind the beloved show Where Should We Begin? sits down with coworkers, cofounders and colleagues, and brings her inimitable perspective to workplace relationships and conflicts.

In November 1995, Ira Glass quietly launched the first episode of This American Life. The rest, as they say, is history. Today his show is a colossal success and Ira Glass is a household name. But in the intervening two decades, Ira has left an indelible mark on the industry by helping to shape hundreds of podcasts as well as hundreds of podcasters — including Alex. On this episode, Alex sits down with his mentor and former boss to talk about the early days at This American Life, what Ira taught Alex, and how being a good boss means learning to set people free.

Nina Jacobson is a force in Hollywood. She’s behind some of the biggest movies of the last 20 years: The Sixth Sense, Pirates of the Caribbean, The Chronicles of Narnia, The Hunger Games, and most recently Crazy Rich Asians. She’s had a lot of success. But also some pretty big failures: a public firing, some box office flops. Nina walks Alex through her failure resume and talks about what it takes to make a hit.

Dapper Dan made a name for himself as one of Harlem’s premier fashion designers in the 1980s, creating unique leather designs covered in counterfeit logos from brands like Gucci and Louis Vuitton. But when the fashion houses found out, they shut him down. So how, 20 years later, did Dapper Dan make it to the top of the world that put him out of business?  We created a playlist of some of the songs that name-drop Dapper Dan, from artists like LL Cool J, Missy Elliott, and Pusha T... You can find it exclusively on Spotify, at open.spotify.com/playlist/6Gl7MBd1RvVT4ihFVrSaqF?si=H6XBdhYHTTW8aBzbUhLXaQ.

As acquisition talks with Spotify continue, Alex and Matt face their hopes and fears about what might lie ahead.

Just days before Thanksgiving, Alex and Matt board a red-eye to Stockholm for a conversation that could change everything.

It's the spring of 2018, four years after Alex and Matt launched Gimlet, and things are not going well. Audiences are flat, ad sales are flagging, and the company is burning through cash at an alarming rate. And with all of those pressures, Alex and Matt have started to fight.

Five years ago, StartUp began chronicling the life of a fledgling Brooklyn-based podcasting company called Gimlet Media. This year, the streaming giant Spotify bought that company. In the final season of StartUp, what it's really like to sell a business.

Alex introduces an episode of The Journal. about companies monitoring their workers. It's common, it's legal. And it can lead to employers having surprisingly personal information about the people who work for them.

Jenny Doan and her husband, Ron, lost most of their savings in the 2008 financial crisis. Retirement was just around the corner, and they didn’t know how they would make it through. That’s when the family went all-in on an unlikely business—a quilt shop.

As a Democrat from a red state, Senator Heidi Heitkamp built a reputation for her willingness to buck party pressure and reach across the aisle. But when Brett Kavanaugh was nominated to the Supreme Court, she found herself facing a decision between her principles and her political fate.

When Elaine Welteroth was appointed editor in chief of Teen Vogue in 2015, she was the youngest and first black editor in the publication’s history. She set out to transform Teen Vogue into something more than just a fashion magazine...but Elaine had taken the helm of a publication in crisis.

Jerry Colonna was a high-flying venture capitalist in New York City at the height of the dot-com boom. He looked like the picture of success—but as time wore on, he felt more and more like a fraud. And when the boom went bust, it all began to unravel for him. Alex talks to Jerry about that struggle, and about how it led him to his current life as one of the most in-demand executive coaches—who just happens to be Alex’s own executive coach.  This episode discusses suicide and mental illness. If you’re feeling depressed or you just need to talk to someone, you can call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. The number is 1-800-273-8255.  The StartUp episode referenced in this conversation — the episode that includes one of Alex and Jerry’s sessions — is called “Shadowed Qualities.”

Actor Erika Alexander came of age at a moment when there were lots of Black TV shows airing in primetime. She got her break in the early ‘90s with a role on the Cosby Show, and found fame as fast-talking lawyer Maxine Shaw in the hit sitcom Living Single. But then the number of Black sitcoms airing on the major networks dwindled, and so did roles for Black actors. In this conversation with The Nod’s Eric Eddings, Erika talks about navigating Hollywood after that Black entertainment boom went bust.

Gretchen Carlson, the long-time co-host of Fox & Friends, set off shockwaves in 2016 when she filed a lawsuit alleging sexual harassment against Fox News chairman Roger Ailes. Just two weeks later, he was ousted from the network. But it had taken years of enduring abusive behavior before the former Miss America spoke out — and she's not done yet. 

Steven Canals was a virtual unknown when he co-created the award-winning TV series Pose. Set in the 1980s ballroom scene of New York, the show is unlike any prime time television drama that had come before it — and that is in large part because Steven Canals is unlike most other show creators in Hollywood. But getting Pose to the screen meant more than breaking down barriers for Steven; it meant coming to understand that the story could not be told without him.

Jeff Ullrich was a struggling business manager with a drinking problem and a waning sense of professional direction when, in 2010, he saw an opportunity: podcasting. It was a brand new medium, and no one had really tapped its potential. Together with comedian Scott Aukerman, Jeff founded Earwolf, one of the first podcast networks, and developed shows like How Did This Get Made? and Comedy Bang! Bang!. Jeff was one of the biggest names in the industry — and then he made a decision that got him erased from the history books.

When Edouardo Jordan’s Seattle restaurant JuneBaby won the James Beard Award for Best New Restaurant last year, it was the first time that an African American chef had won that particular honor. Edouardo won for a restaurant that reclaims black southern food and proclaims its history. But he had spent years overlooking his culinary roots as he trained in high-end kitchens. It was a path he started down when, as a lowly cook in Tampa, Florida, he talked himself into a job at the famed restaurant The French Laundry.

Dave Morin’s love for the internet began when he was a geeky kid in Montana. By his early 20s, it had led him to Apple and then to Facebook, where he became employee number 29. He helped the company innovate, pursuing a deeply-held mission: letting people be themselves and share their lives on the internet. But when Facebook began to shift, deprioritizing user privacy, Dave left the company. And he tried to create his own social media utopia.

Anna Chlumsky became famous virtually overnight at the age of 10, when she starred in the 1991 hit My Girl opposite Macaulay Culkin. And then, a few years later, she disappeared. She left acting completely and decided to become something else: an utterly normal college student, who set off on an utterly normal career. Anna tells Alex about that time in her life, about her eventual return to acting, and about playing Amy Brookheimer on the HBO show Veep. She’s earned five Emmy nominations in that role. 

In the days after September 11, 2001, Kenneth Feinberg took on an unenviable task. Congress had created the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund, and it was his job to figure out who should receive money and how much they should get. But much of his time was spent doing something else: listening to people’s stories. Nearly two decades later, he’s still the person we turn to in the wake of our worst catastrophes.

Paul Holes was starting out in the field of criminology when, one day in 1994, he spotted a filing cabinet in the library of the crime lab where he was working. He opened a drawer, pulled out some files, and discovered the cold case that he would spend his entire career trying to solve. He did it through a trial and error process that involved old-fashioned detective work, new technology, and countless wrong turns before he finally found himself at the Golden State Killer’s front door. 

In 1998, Patty McCord joined a new company called Netflix. Her title was chief talent officer. And over the next ten years as Netflix grew (and grew), she and CEO Reed Hastings built a new kind of workplace. They threw out all the usual rules -- no more expense authorization forms or vacation requests -- and focused on creating a culture of excellence. But that culture of excellence didn’t come only through hiring the right people. Patty had to get good at firing, too. 

During the dot-com bubble, Henry Blodget was making millions of dollars as a top analyst on Wall Street. But when that bubble burst, his fortunes changed. He became the public face of a corruption investigation that ended with the SEC banning him from the securities industry — for life. Henry tells Alex about the supreme shame of that moment, and about how he eventually started over by founding a new venture, Business Insider.

Business Wars brings you the unauthorized, real story of what drives these companies and their leaders, inventors, investors and executives to new heights — or to ruin. Now playing: Death Row Records vs. Bad Boy Records. Subscribe and listen at wondery.fm/startup

For many businesses, it’s all about looking forward. New trends, new brands, new verticals. But Sharon Price John sees a different path: one that involves looking to the past. She has made a career of reinvigorating forgotten and failing brands, including Nerf, Stride Rite, and Barbie Fashions. But her career hasn’t been all success all the time. Alex talks to Sharon about a bet she made that went very wrong, and about her biggest turnaround yet, as the CEO and President of Build-a-Bear Workshop.

Before 1970, the most popular radio stations in the U.S were run by white people. But that all changed when Percy Sutton helped to form Inner City Broadcasting with the mission of putting black programming in the hands of black people. Together he and his son Pierre—and later Pierre’s daughter, Keisha—built a radio empire. But it was about more than just entertaining listeners; together they changed the culture and radically influenced how radio stations and record labels treated black artists. Alex talks with Pierre and Keisha about the unlikely rise—and heartbreaking fall—of their family business. 

Gimlet has a new show called Without Fail where Alex talks to all kinds of people — including entrepreneurs and business people — about their successes and their failures and what they’ve learned from both. We think these conversations are ones that StartUp listeners would enjoy, so we're bringing them to you here. Director and screenwriter Sam Esmail’s TV series Mr. Robot was an immediate hit when it premiered in 2015, turning him into one of the most in-demand showrunners in Hollywood. But he didn’t have an easy path to that point. Sam was 38 by the time Mr. Robot launched. He’d worked all kinds of jobs -- including a stint as a startup founder -- and seen all kinds of setbacks. Sam tells Alex about the stuff that came before, and about why he couldn’t quit trying to make movies, even when success was a long way off.

Eva Moskowitz calls Success Academy's high school the startup within the startup. And, as at any startup, there’s been a lot of chaos in its first few years. Magic five--it’s no longer working. The kids are questioning authority. Teachers are leaving. And parents want answers. But this year also marks Success Academy’s first graduating class. We’ll find out if Eva’s grand experiment comes with a big collegiate payoff.

Over the years, Success Academy has faced many existential threats. Eva has had to battle the most powerful man in New York City to fight for space for her schools. She has also had to defend her organization when a controversial video featuring a Success teacher was leaked to the New York Times. Today on the show, we watch Eva battle these setbacks, meeting both with a single-minded defense.

It’s no mystery that Success Academy has high expectations — not just for its teachers, but also for its parents and students. Having a high bar is the key to Success’ amazing results. But the charter network’s expectations can make life hard for families and kids who don’t quite make the mark. In this episode, we will hear from two families who ran headlong into Success Academy’s high expectations. -- Thanks to our sponsor, Cole Haan. You can hear more of Lisa and other Gimlet hosts in conversation at ExtraordinariesOnTheMic.com, produced in partnership with Cole Haan.

Success Academy has grown quickly — in just 12 years, the network has gone from one school in Harlem to 47 schools across New York City. In order to do this, Success has had to hire many inexperienced teachers, and move them up the ranks quickly. Amidst all this growth, there is a lot of pressure on the staff to continue performing at incredibly high levels. And Success has managed to keep crushing the state tests. In episode 4 of the series, we examine how growth has changed Success for better, and for worse. -- Thanks to our sponsor, Cole Haan. You can hear more of Lisa and other Gimlet hosts in conversation at ExtraordinariesOnTheMic.com, produced in partnership with Cole Haan.

Success Academy’s state test results are truly remarkable — their students score in the top one percent in New York State, often beating out kids from the wealthiest districts. And the network's reputation is built on these results — it’s a big part of how they attract new students, win over donors, and get approval to open school after school. To find out how Success gets these scores, we go inside their test-taking machine. There are puppies and toys, “pump-up” songs, and a crazy event at the 19,000-seat Barclays Center called Slam the Exam. And, of course, there’s lots of test prep. We’ll hear from students and teachers who’ve grown skeptical of all the time devoted to getting good scores. We’ll see how significant passing the state test can be for a student who’s struggled. And we’ll hear Eva Moskowitz defend her school’s intense focus on test prep, which she prefers to call “mastery.”

Eva Moskowitz is the founder and CEO of Success Academy, the highest performing and most controversial charter school network in New York City, and the subject of this season of StartUp. To understand Success, you have to understand Eva. So on this episode, we go back to the beginning, looking at what got Eva interested in education in the first place, seeing the battles she fought on her way to starting Success, and watching as she opens her first schools. She cut her teeth serving on the New York City Council as chair of its Education Committee. In 2003, she did the unthinkable for a Democratic politician: she challenged the teachers’ union. The war that ensued would include protests outside her schools, parents opposing Success at local hearings, and a newly elected mayor trying to shut her down. Eva’s instinct to fight has helped keep Success Academy growing, but it has also made her a lot of enemies.

The Story: Eva Moskowitz wants to fix a really big problem. There are over a million kids in New York City’s public schools. Most can’t read or do math at grade level. Many won’t graduate on time. And it’s largely poor, black and brown kids who are stuck in the lowest performing schools. Eva’s the founder and CEO of Success Academy, the subject of this season of StartUp. And she’s actually making progress. Her school network is growing at lightning speed, and her students get among the highest standardized-test scores in the city, beating out schools in some of the wealthiest districts. And the education world is watching. But not everyone likes what they see. In this season, we ask how exactly Success is doing what it’s doing, and why does it have so many critics? Today, on the first of our six-part series about Success, we meet a mother, Sherisse, who desperately wants her son to get into Success, so that he can have opportunities she never had herself. And we go inside a Success classroom on the first day of school, to see what parents like Sherisse are clamoring for. The Facts: Peter Leonard mixed the episode. Our theme song is by Mark Philips, remixed by Bobby Lord. Build Buildings wrote and performed our special ad music. Additional music by Peter Leonard, Bobby Lord, Hot Moms Dot Gov, Jupyter, Mothica,Golden Gram and BlueDot. For a list of our sponsors and show related offer codes, go to gimlet.media/OurAdvertisers 

Alex Blumberg sits down with the stars of the Homecoming  TV show-- Julia Roberts and Stephan James, and director Sam Esmail-- to talk about how they came to the project and what it was like to film it. This is the final part of a four-part mini-series on the making of the Homecoming TV show. Want more StartUp? Check out our newsletter! You can sign up at: gimletmedia.com/newsletter. To find a list of our sponsors and show-related promo codes, go to gimlet.media/OurAdvertisers

Being in charge of a big-budget TV production means having to make decisions. It's a new kind of power for Micah and Eli, and one that's sometimes uncomfortable to exercise. The words they write have real-world, three-dimensional—and sometimes winged—consequences. This is the third part of a four-part mini-series on the making of the Homecoming TV show. Want more StartUp? Check out our newsletter! You can sign up at: gimletmedia.com/newsletter. To find a list of our sponsors and show-related promo codes, go to gimlet.media/OurAdvertisers

Micah and Eli get to work, writing the scripts for the Homecoming TV show. But taking something meant only for the ear, and turning it into something for the eye... proves to be deceptively challenging. Plus, Alex visits the set of the show, to meet the small army of people actually building the visual world of Homecoming. This is the second part of a four-part mini-series on the making of the Homecoming TV show. Want more StartUp? Check out our newsletter! You can sign up at: gimletmedia.com/newsletter. To find a list of our sponsors and show-related promo codes, go to gimlet.media/OurAdvertisers

Two years ago, Gimlet released its first fiction podcast: Homecoming. Now, this November, a television series based on the hit podcast and starring Julia Roberts is launching.  Alex Blumberg was behind the scenes as Homecoming went from podcast to TV production. In this first episode, Homecoming creators Eli Horowitz and Micah Bloomberg recount the journey, from concept to podcast to pitching the show to bigtime Hollywood producers. And we hear from some of the celebrities they met along the way. This is the first part of a four-part mini-series on the making of the Homecoming TV show. Want more StartUp? Check out our newsletter! You can sign up at: gimletmedia.com/newsletter. To find a list of our sponsors and show-related promo codes, go to gimlet.media/OurAdvertisers

The Story: At the end of the last episode, co-founders Justin, Emmett, Michael, and Kyle had a big problem on their hands. Streaming Justin's life 24/7—the very idea their company was founded on—turned out to be kind of boring. Pretty soon people stopped watching. In this episode, the four friends try desperately to extend the life of their company by making some risky but important decisions. In the process, their scrappy startup catches the eye of some very powerful people who challenge everything they’ve built. The road of a startup is a bumpy one and, as Justin and his team are finding out, they have only just gotten started. This is the second part of a two-part story that originally aired in April of 2016. Listen to Part 1 https://gimlet.media/2N80DUE.    The Facts: Matthew Boll and Peter Leonard mixed the episode. Our theme song was written and performed by Mark Phillips. The special ad music, Microliters, was written and performed by Build Buildings. Additional music by Kevin Sparks and the band hotmoms.gov. For a list of our sponsors and show related offer codes, go to gimlet.media/OurAdvertisers 

The Story: A group of friends moves across the country to launch an unlikely website that they think could replace television. The media loves them. They just need to figure out how to get their users to feel the same way. This is part one of a two-part series that originally aired in April of 2016. The Facts: Matthew Boll and Peter Leonard mixed the episode. Our theme song was written and performed by Mark Phillips. For a list of our sponsors and show related offer codes, go to gimlet.media/OurAdvertisers 

The Story: In the evangelical world, there are very few female church planters. In 2012 only three percent of all conservative churches had women as lead pastors. In large part because one of their key theological beliefs is that women, according to the Bible, are not meant to lead churches. But there are other reasons too — maybe even bigger reasons. This is the story of one woman’s quest to do what all the boys were allowed to do… and how she tried to square what she wanted, with what lots of others said that God wanted. This is the sixth and final episode in our series on church planting. The Facts: Peter Leonard mixed the episode. Build Buildings wrote and performed our special ad music. Additional music by Haley Shaw. For a list of our sponsors and show related offer codes, go to gimlet.media/OurAdvertisers