What It Felt Like When Everyone Was Hopeful, Happy, and Rich
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What does the episode’s opening reveal about the current economic pessimism?
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Hello and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Joe Weisenthal.
And I'm Tracy Alloway.
Tracy, w where were you in the nineties?
Uh good question. I was in Chicago for a couple years, like I wanna say ninety, ninety one, and then from like ninety-one to ninety-four, ninety-five, I was in Japan. And then ninety five to I guess ninety eight or ninety nine, I was in Chicago.
I have to say, even though we've been doing this podcast together nine years, like there actually is quite a bit that I don't know about you. And I feel like there is a lot of as the kids say these days, Tracy Lore that comes out from time to time or the Tracy No, I just moved
around a lot and you don't remember whenever I tell you my my time periods and locations. Well, that's all that's okay. Well, that's also that's okay.
That's okay. That's possible. I also moved around a lot. But I have to say the nineteen nineties. So this is I'm struggling with this. The nineteen nineties, particularly the second half of the nineties, I remember it as a period of a lot of optimism and wealth and harmony and peace. But the other thing is I was young and now I'm old, and I'm sort of trying to reconcile this thing. Like was there an object was those g were those really good gears?
Or
is it just personal nostalgia from when I wasn't old?
I mean the answer is it's probably a mix, right? But you're right. There was something kind of going on in the late nineteen nineties. Actually, Joe, you'll enjoy this story. My after school job when I was in Chicago for a while was taking care of our next door neighbor's giant aquarium. And he was an early investor apparently in Oracle.
Amazing. And
he spent all his money on tropical fish.
Amazing.
And so for one week it was my job to go feed the tropical fish and I would go every day and one by one the tropical fish started dying.
Oh.
By the end of the week there were none left. And the guy came back and he was like, Thanks for taking care of my fish. And I was so worried that I was gonna get in trouble for ruining this guy's like multi million dollar aquarium. But it turns out he had had it installed like the week before and they hadn't got the salt levels and the water right or something. So it wasn't my fault. It wasn't upshot. That's the upshot. I thought that was gonna I thought there was
gonna be like a an allegory for the dream of the dot com bubble and then it all collapsing with the fish dying. But I'm not sure. Yeah, that's
that's where I'm going with it. That's what it is.
So here's my memory of the nineties. You know, there was just that it seemed like there weren't many wars happening. And of course, that feeling ended very quickly, not long after, with September eleventh. But the other thing, I have this m one summer I got made two thousand dollars from a summer job and I got into day trading. And I turned it into twenty thousand dollars, which was just an insane amount of money at the time. And I had this memory of walking down. the street somewhere and I'm and I was thinking We're rich now. Like I'm rich now. And I never thought this would happen. I'm a rich person and my family is rich because I turned two thousand dollars into twenty thousand dollars. And so there was that personal experience in retrospect, twenty thousand dollars, not really rich, but all also in retrospect the whole thing wasn't sustainable and durable.
But I do remember this one specific moment feeling life is really good these days.
So there's two things I would point out other than the idea that everyone was getting rich.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What does the episode’s opening reveal about the current economic pessimism?
0:00–4:59
2
How does Tracy recall the late‑1990s feeling of optimism and personal wealth?
4:59–9:56
3
Why did Colette Shade write *Y2K* and how does she define the era between the dot‑com boom and the 2008 crash?
9:56–15:23
4
What cultural symbols (fashion, tech gadgets, cars) illustrate the Y2K aesthetic and its optimism?
15:23–21:20
5
How did the dot‑com bubble’s “irrational exuberance” compare to the later subprime mortgage crisis?
21:20–27:52
6
In what ways did the September 11 attacks shift the economic and geopolitical narrative?
27:52–31:57
7
What personal stories does the guest share about wealth, day‑trading, and the rise of tech entrepreneurs?
31:57–39:37
8
What lessons does the conversation draw about nostalgia, optimism, and the future of economic cycles?
39:37–43:42
Speakers
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