, Slate’s new podcast about companies in the news and how they got there.
There’s a large fan base of people who love to watch Hallmark movies, maybe a little ironically, or maybe with sincerity, or maybe sometimes a little bit of both. Tressie McMillan Cottom is one of them. She’s a sociologist who mostly studies serious stuff, but when it comes to Hallmark movies, she has a weak spot.
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“Nobody ever asks me about something like Hallmark. I do this all day. All they ever want me to come and talk about is the end of the world. I’m like, ‘I would really much rather talk about Hallmark,’ ” Cottom says. “One of the things that Hallmark does give me is I get to turn my brain off.”
is a series about businesses that have made dramatic turnarounds during the pandemic, in partnership with Slate’s Thrilling Tales of Modern Capitalism podcast.
If you had to bet on a company to thrive at the start of a once-in-a-century global pandemic, you would have been on the right track with vaccine-maker Moderna (stock up 750 percent in the past 12 months), digital conference software Zoom (stock up 400 percent), or e-commerce giant Amazon (up 72 percent for a market capitalization of
$1.5 trillion).
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If you tried to design a company to fall flat on its face over the past year, you’d have trouble coming up with a more ruinous proposition than WeWork, the coworking startup whose failed IPO was the talk of Wall Street and Silicon Valley in the fall of 2019. One business you
, Slate’s new podcast about companies in the news and how they got there.
When I think about Jewish holidays, I think about the oil burning for eight days and the plagues descending on the Egyptians and all that. But I also think about Manischewitz matzo and their matzo ball soup mix and I think about Manischewitz wine. If you’re not familiar with it, it’s absurdly, grotesquely sweet. It is not good wine. Some people find it undrinkable. And yet for many, even those same people who find it undrinkable, a Jewish holiday just isn’t complete without a bottle of Manischewitz.
, Slate’s new podcast about companies in the news and how they got there.
Pinterest isn’t supposed to be a website for women. There’s nothing inherently female about curating images on the internet. But women still constitute 70 percent of Pinterest’s user base, and the site has only gotten more female over time, in part because its algorithm is self-reinforcing. The more people who come to Pinterest looking for so-called female content, the more Pinterest prioritizes that kind of content, and the cycle continues.
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But there’s another reason: Pinterest has a reputation for being one of the nicest corners of the internet. If you want a man to shout at you, you can go to Reddit or Twitter. But if you want to trade ideas for reindeer-themed cupcakes, or medium-length beach wave hairstyles, or DIY boho-style twinkle-light canopy beds, well, Pinterest is the place for you. When the pandemic started, and people began cutting their own hair and launching their own