What I learned From Listening To Podcasts This Week 8/7/2021

 Podcasts are convenient, time-saving, and enjoyable. They enable me (and, I hope, you) to be entertained, to think in different ways about the world, and to assimilate new knowledge. 

This week, I focused my podcast listening on iconic brands that have either withered away or somehow been resurrected like a corporate Lazarus. This week, I focused on Brooks Brothers, Sears, and General Motors. You don't get more American than that.

 So here's what I learned this week by listening to my podcast feed in the week ending 8/7/2021. (Note: Because of the volume of podcasts
I listen to, as a reviewer, I may not always be referencing the latest episode of a podcast.)

Thrilling Tales Of Modern Capitalism -- Brooks Brothers: A Button-Down Bankruptcy -- October 2, 2020

Brooks Brothers was started in 1818 by Henry Brooks and then taken over by his four sons. The company, which filed for bankruptcy last year, was responsible for numerous innovations in men's fashion and apparel. For example, Brooks Brothers designed the first polo shirt and the first button-down shirt, which was actually stitched to keep the collar from flying up on polo players during a match. In 1957, Brooks Brothers became the first American retailer to manufacture argyle socks for men, and they developed wash-and-wear shirts.

Clearstory -- Home In A Kit -- July 15, 2021

From 1908-1942, Sears sold and delivered over 70,000 home kits to consumers around the United States. These kits, while immensely popular, offered people with limited resources and blacks who were shut out of the housing market, a chance to build then own their own home. Sears gave mortgages to people regardless of race and ethnic background and effectively bankrolled the beginning of the ownership culture. Many of those homes still stand today.

Business Movers -- Back From The Dead -- July 29, 2021

David Welch, Bloomberg Detroit bureau chief, wrote an article in 2005 that General Motors was headed inevitably toward bankruptcy. In the podcast, Welch recounts how GM execs denied that the company was in any financial trouble at all. What Welch discerned that GM ignored was that the giant automaker was buckling under onerous union contracts, crippling pension and health care obligations, a lack of R&D on new cars, and a refusal to collapse car lines.

99% Invisible -- Hanko -- July 20, 2021

In Japan, most people cannot sign any legal or semi-legal documents without Hanko. If you're like me, you'd say, "what's Hanko?"

Hanko is also called insho. They are the carved stamp seals that people in Japan often use in place of signatures. Hanko seals are made from materials ranging from plastic to jade and are about the size of a tube of lipstick. The end of each hanko is etched with its owner’s name, usually in the kanji pictorial characters used in Japanese writing. This carved end is then dipped in red cinnabar paste and impressed on a document as a form of identification. 

Hanko seals effectively work like signatures in other cultures, only instead of signing on a dotted line, Japanese citizens impress their hanko in a small circle to prove their identity. 

In Japan, you need to have your own personal hanko with you whenever you stamp something, and you have to stamp it in person.

After listening to that episode, I could not resist a thought experiment on what my hanko would look like.

What would your hanko look like? Let me know.