Business Wars
Episodes
Red Bull vs Monster - Beast Gores Bull | 2
15 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
As Red Bull plans its U.S. invasion, an unlikely upstart vies to beat it to market. Led by branding guru Mark Hall, the wholesome Hansen Beverage Comp...
Red Bull vs Monster - Get Your Wings | 1
13 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
It’s the early 1980s, and in Bangkok, Thailand, a jet-lagged toothpaste marketing exec named Dietrich Mateschitz has just tasted Krating Daeng, an e...
Napster vs The Record Labels - Interview with Mikael Wood | 7
08 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Host David Brown sits down with L.A. Times pop music critic Mikael Wood to talk about how Napster changed not only the music business, but music itsel...
Napster vs The Record Labels - Fight to the Death | 6
06 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Napster is approaching its death throes. The file sharing company has one shot left: Bertelsmann, the record label that’s confident it has come up w...
Napster vs The Record Labels - A Fatal Email | 5
01 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Some of the biggest names in music have gathered to duke it out over the future of Napster. The Senate Judiciary Committee’s intellectual property h...
Napster vs The Record Labels - Battle of the Bands | 4
30 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
As the game of cat and mouse heats up with the record labels. The labels know that unless Napster is stopped, it’ll destroy the record labels. That ...
Napster vs The Record Labels - Free is Costly | 3
25 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Napster co-founders Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker finally get to Silicon Valley, where their dream for music sharing is supposed to take off. &nb...
Napster vs The Record Labels - Silicon Valley or Bust | 2
23 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Naysayers tell Shawn Fanning that only an experienced Silicon Valley software engineer solve all the technological challenges to get Napster working. ...
Napster vs The Record Labels - The Beginning of the End | 1
18 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
It’s 2000, and the record industry is just waking up to a major threat to its business model: an online file-sharing system created by a 17-year-old...
Xbox vs Playstation - Interview with Tristan Donovan | 4
16 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Host David Brown sits down with Tristan Donovan, series writer and author of Replay: The History of Video Games, just as this console war enters uncha...
Xbox vs Playstation - Tear Down This Wall | 3
11 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
As Nintendo burns with the failure of Wii U, Sony can’t woo PS2 users to the new Playstation 3. It vows to not make that mistake again, and the Play...
Xbox vs Playstation - The Red Ring of Death | 2
09 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Microsoft put all its efforts into it’s new console, the Xbox 360 to beat combat Sony’s market share and it looked like it was working. Thousands ...
Xbox vs Playstation - The Biggest Cannon in the World | 1
04 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Sony was preparing Playstation to eventually replace personal computers. Microsoft sees that coming and goes into combat mode. Bill Gates spends ...
Southwest vs American - Interview with Joseph Guinto | 7
02 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Host David Brown chats with freelance journalist and series writer Joseph Guinto about the 22 years he’s spent covering Southwest Airlines… includ...
Southwest vs American - Free LUV | 6
27 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Thanks to deregulation, no-frills knock offs of Southwest take to the skies like crows. About 120 airlines have gone out of business or filed for...
Southwest vs American - The Cult of Herb | 5
25 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Everyone loves Herb Kelleher—even FAA regulators. The onetime corporate counsel-turned-CEO is coming into his own at the helm of Southwest. But his ...
Southwest vs American - The Darling of Deregulation | 4
20 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
As deregulation dawns, Southwest Airlines’ founder and CEO are locked in a power struggle. In the middle is Herb Kelleher, Southwest’s corporate a...
Southwest vs American - Aviation Cyber Wars | 3
18 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The computer age is on the horizon, and American Airlines has a secret weapon: SABRE. Sure, the airline is top of the heap under the current pen-and-p...
Southwest vs American - Dogfight Over Dallas | 2
13 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Baniff and Southwest battled in court for domination over the skies. Southwest came out on top for a little while, but Baniff pushed back with prices ...
Southwest vs. American - Clearing the Runway | 1
11 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In Texas in the 1960s, Rollin King had a crazy idea. He wanted to create a no-frills airline service that served San Antonio, Dallas and Houston. All ...
Coke vs Pepsi - Interview with Tristan Donovan | 7
06 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Host David Brown chats with series writer Tristan Donovan, author of Fizz: How Soda Shook Up the World, about some of the juicy tidbits that didn’t ...
Coke vs Pepsi - The Soda Revolt | 6
04 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Coke continues to grapple with Pepsi’s winning ads, but as Y2K nears both companies realize this isn’t just a cola war anymore. There’s more bac...
Coke vs Pepsi - No Sacred Cows | 5
30 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
With the Pepsi Challenge under attack by Coke, Pepsi needs a new ad campaign. So the company turns for inspiration to the biggest pop star in the worl...
Coke vs Pepsi - The Imitator's Revenge | 4
28 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Welcome to the Pepsi Generation. As Pepsi fires up a hot new ad campaign, Coca-Cola starts getting nervous. But a sudden plane detour through Ireland ...
Coke vs Pepsi - Cola über Alles | 3
23 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
With world war on the horizon, Coca-Cola and Pepsi face a supply crisis. How to get enough sugar to continue bottling their sweet fizzy goodness? One ...
Coke vs Pepsi - Candy Monster | 2
21 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The cola cops are coming. Pepsi, an upstart Coca-Cola imitator, grabs its rival’s attention by serving up its own beverage to unsuspecting soda foun...
Coke vs Pepsi - Cocaine is King | 1
16 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In turn of the century Atlanta, pharmacist John Pemberton has invented a dynamite health tonic with some secret ingredients his customers can’t get ...
eBay vs PayPal - Interview with Kara Swisher | 7
14 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
We hope you enjoyed our series on eBay vs PayPal. Here to discuss her thoughts on the PayPal mafia alums is Kara Swisher. Swisher is the self-describe...
eBay vs PayPal - Outta the Gate | 6
09 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
PayPal is running out of time. The online payment service is hauling in new users, but its bottom line is bleeding red. Without a buyer to pump it ful...
eBay vs PayPal - Breaking Up Is Hard To Do | 5
07 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
By late 2000, PayPal and X.com are yoked together, with X.com CEO Elon Musk leading the newly combined company. But it’s a rocky marriage: PayPal’...
eBay vs PayPal - How Bad Is It? | 4
02 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Remember the summer of 2000? The Olympics were in full swing and PayPal was under attack. Not from eBay, but Russian hackers. In looking for soft targ...
eBay vs PayPal - PayPal Goes Viral | 3
31 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In the midst of the dot-com boom, there's also a lot of dot-com bust. PayPal desperately needed to grow but they companies who'd raised millions more ...
eBay vs PayPal - The E-commerce Revolution | 2
26 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
As eBay gathers steam, a libertarian chess champion and a programmer who fled Communist Ukraine team up to change the world with their encryption soft...
eBay vs PayPal - Going Once, Going Twice | 1
24 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
At the dawn of the dotcom era, a Silicon Valley tech geek on a personal vendetta rolls out the world’s first e-commerce site. Vintage lunchboxes? Se...
Hearst vs Pulitzer - Interview with Gabriel Kahn | 7
28 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Joining us today is Gabriel Kahn, a professor of journalism at the University of Southern California. He’s a former Los Angeles bureau chief for the...
Hearst vs Pulitzer - Days of Atonement | 6
26 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
By 1900, the days of yellow journalism were already fading, and both William Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer were searching for a new direction even as the...
Hearst vs Pulitzer - Newsies | 5
21 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
A close up look at a crisis of their own making. One that nearly cost Hearst and Pulitzer their grip on the country’s first media empires. Instead o...
Hearst vs Pulitzer - War Drums | 4
19 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
What happens when there’s no news? You have to MAKE the news.When Hearst heard from his top reporter that the Spanish-Cuban tension wasn’t looking...
Hearst vs Pulitzer - The Price of News | 3
14 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In 1883, 15 years before the Headless Torso Murder, New York City's population was rapidly growing and the newspaper scene was pretty sleepy. The city...
Hearst vs Pulitzer - The Headless Torso, Part 2 | 2
12 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In 1897, America looked very different. Carriages rolled through the streets of New York. Mass media was just growing up, and Hearst was convinced tha...
Hearst vs Pulitzer - The Headless Torso, Part 1 | 1
07 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
This is the beginning of a mystery, a great business rivalry, and a look into American history. To tell the story of Hearst vs Pulitzer, we called our...
Gregor Mendel vs the World - American Innovations | 1
10 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Host David Brown interviews Steven Johnson, the host of the new podcast American Innovations.Support us by supporting our sponsors!See Privacy Policy ...
The First Computer War - Computing Gets Personal | 6
08 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
After all that IBM has been through over the decades, it would have never in a million years guessed that their undoing would be at the hands of a scr...
The First Computer War - Betting the Store | 5
03 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
It’s 1961. Since his father retired 5 years earlier, Thomas Watson Jr pushed to modernize IBM from the top down. New management, new ideas, newer, f...
The First Computer War - Abdication | 4
01 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In Episode 1 the UNIVAC successfully predicted that Eisenhower would win the 1952 election. In Philadelphia, a champagne hangover quickly settled in o...
The First Computer War - IBM versus The UNIVAC | 3
26 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
What’s a 16% market share when the public thinks you have more? A potential anti-trust suit, if you’re IBM. Watson Jr. sees a potential lawsuit as...
The First Computer War - Father, Son, and The Future | 2
24 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
How do you really “get ahead” in a war? Sometimes you don’t have to do anything, you just wait for your opponent to fumble.And in the late 1940s...
The First Computer War - The Electronic Brain | 1
19 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
With so much information at our fingertips, it’s hard to remember that we haven’t always walked around with supercomputers in our pockets. In...
Marvel vs DC - Interview with Jason Mewes and Reed Tucker | 7
12 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
What's that? Up in the sky? It's another episode of Business Wars. Today we're talking to two super guests, Reed Tucker is a journalist living in New ...
Marvel vs DC - The Cinematic Universe | 6
10 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
After more than 50 years of fighting for the hearts and attention spans of millions of readers, television viewers, and movie-goers - who wins this wa...
Marvel vs DC - Big Screen Heroes | 5
05 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Appearances on radio programs, television shows and thousands of comic books - all just another day in the life of a superhero. But to get a larger th...
Marvel vs DC - Schemes, Scans, and Double Crosses | 4
03 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
It’s 1970 and the unthinkable just happened. Jack Kirby, one of the men who made Marvel, has defected to DC. With him he brought an idea that may ju...
Marvel vs DC - Copycat | 3
29 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
As Marvel’s richer storylines captivate more readers, DC just can’t keep up, or fully understand Marvel’s success. They even try directly copyin...
Marvel vs DC - The Fantastic Mr. Lee | 2
27 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
We’ve talked about several wars on this series, but here’s a first: DC and Marvel engaging with each other, sniping, making fun, and getting their...
Marvel vs DC - Origin Stories | 1
21 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In the early 1960s, the Space Race was on, Chubby Checkers got everyone doin’ the twist and Superman was turning 25. DC has it all - a legacy comic,...
Nike vs Adidas - Interview with Liz Dolan and David Meltzer | 7
20 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Today we talked to Liz Dolan, former Nike CMO, and David Meltzer, sports marketing guru and agent about this vicious war. If you loved them here, you’...
Nike vs Adidas - The Defectors | 6
15 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The rivalry between Nike and Adidas has been intense for decades, but always respectful. But with intensity comes… defectors. Just three at the begi...
Nike vs Adidas - Rebound | 5
13 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Nike, the late starter struck gold with its “Just Do It” campaign. Launched in 1988, the shoe giant finally had a tagline as good as its shoes. Me...
Nike vs Adidas - Nike Air | 4
08 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Every new Nike employee gets a list of principles that serves as the company’s philosophy. One: Our business is change. Two: We’re on of...
Nike vs Adidas - Walking Billboards | 3
06 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
As long as there have been professional sports, there have been professional athletes, willing to accept money to wear certain brands, but the biggest...
Nike vs Adidas - The Starting Line | 2
01 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Rudi and Adi Dassler started the “Dassler Business” in the 1920s in their parent’s garage, recycling materials from WWI military gear and unifor...
Nike vs Adidas - Sneakerheads | 1
27 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In 2015, Kanye West turned his back on Nike, an all out battle in the ongoing war for sneaker supremacy. Nike and Adidas are two multinational compani...
Netflix vs Blockbuster - Interview with Rich Greenfield | 8
22 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Rich Greenfield is a tech and media analyst with BTIG who’s been covering this battle in some capacity for decades. We had the chance to talk to him...
Netflix vs Blockbuster - The Way We Watch | 7
20 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Netflix goes from being a streaming company to a movement in which consumers all over the world decide what show to watch -- and when and how they wat...
Netflix vs Blockbuster - Binge | 6
15 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Hollywood execs thought Netflix was crazy to give up advertising and spin off opportunities by letting viewers flop on a couch and watch a whole seaso...
Netflix vs Blockbuster - HBO Gets In The Ring | 5
13 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
We take a step back to explore how a little company called Home Box Office went from serving B-movies to 325 homes in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania to be...
Netflix vs Blockbuster - The Digital Divide | 4
08 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
You know that expression “content is king”? Well it turns out, sometimes it’s not. Sometimes it’s a hard-working algorithm that burrows into c...
Netflix vs Blockbuster - Dirty Tricks | 3
06 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Thinking like your enemy is the best way to beat them, and during the war, Blockbuster tried every trick in the books to get inside Netflix. Sometimes...
Netflix vs Blockbuster - Origins | 2
06 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
After Hastings pleaded with Antioco to buy Blockbuster Online, Antioco agreed to present Hasting’s proposal to the board. What he didn’t tell him ...
Netflix vs Blockbuster - Sudden Death | 1
06 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
This is Episode 1 of an 8-part series on the brutal business battle between Netflix and Blockbuster, and later HBO.It all started around 1997, with a ...
Introducing: Business Wars
19 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Netflix-HBO. Nike-Adidas. Business is war. Sometimes the prize is your wallet. Sometimes your attention. Sometimes just the fun of beating the other g...