At one point valued at $47 billion, the real estate startup — which offers temporary shared office spaces with trendy furnishings — took
a truly spectacular tumble. WeWork’s plans for an IPO failed as reports surfaced of co-founder Adam Neumann’s extravagant spending and potential conflicts of interest. Investor SoftBank ultimately bailed out the company, taking a multibillion-dollar hit, while Neumann walked away with a $1.7 billion golden parachute.
What makes it Molly’s fix of the year? “EVERRRRRYTHING,” Molly said. “From the insane corporate governance to SoftBank distorting the entire tech economy to the absurdity of a real estate company being called a tech company … it is the greatest story of all time.”
Kai Ryssdal said when it comes to the biggest story of 2019, “It's gotta be Trump just dumping all over Powell and the Fed.” Unlike his predecessors, President Donald Trump hasn’t been shy about what he wants the Federal Reserve to do when it comes to the benchmark interest rate: lower it. He even
discussed plans to fire Fed Chair Jerome Powell after the Fed raised rates last December.
It’s “the monetary policy equivalent of bananapants,” Kai said.
This Year's Top Shot
We have reached Peak Influencer.
Advertisers spent an estimated $8 billion on sponsored content (aka SponCon) on social media in 2019. And while that number is expected to continue growing, influencer marketing faced something of a fall from grace,
coming under a spotlight that wasn’t always flattering.
One of SponCon’s big facepalms: YouTuber Olivia Jade (daughter of Lori Loughlin and Mossimo Giannulli) became one of the most high-profile students involved in this year’s
college admissions bribery scandal … and lost her social media sponsorship deals in the process.
Influence itself came into question when a study that found a proliferation of fake accounts on Instagram, which were boosting the follower numbers of aspiring influencers, cost brands an estimated
$1.3 billion this year.
Still, influencers are far from canceled. In November, Los Angeles played host to the second annual
American Influencers Awards. Winnie Harlow, winner of the “lifestyle influencer” honor, is pictured above at a Dior runway show earlier this month.
Photo credit: Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images
Final Numbers
Grab a seat and get comfortable. There’s college football to watch.
117
That’s how many years it’s been since
the first Rose Bowl game was played in 1902. It was known at the time as the Tournament East-West Football Game. The New Year’s Day game moved to Rose Bowl Stadium in 1923 and was broadcast nationally on television for the first time in 1952.
40
The number of college bowl games has proliferated since those early days. Today, watching college football has become a robust holiday tradition, with
40 games played between mid-December and early January. By next year, that could grow to 44.
$470 million
That’s how much ESPN pays on average for the
right to broadcast college football’s playoff series each year. The most popular games are the Cotton, Peach, Fiesta, Sugar and Rose bowls, as well as the championship game in January.
27 million
That’s how many viewers
tuned in for the 2019 college football championship game between Clemson and Alabama, which included estimates for people watching the game on streaming services.
This Week on the Podcast
Episode 144.1: A very quantum Christmas (and Molly’s 2020 predictions)
We revisit one of our favorite interviews this year, plus Molly sets her crystal ball toward 2020. Happy holidays! (Listening time, 36:28)
Tell us what’s making you smarter at
smarter@marketplace.org. We'd love to include your recommendation in a future newsletter.
"One Nation, Tracked"
Listener Nick H. recommends this
data visualization of smartphone user locations around the United States and the accompanying investigation into how companies are tracking those users. “Today, it’s perfectly legal to collect and sell all this information,” the authors write.
•••
The economics of aging gracefully
Listener Bijan M. recommends
this Q&A with University of Massachusetts professor Jan Mutchler about her research on economic insecurity among the elderly. “In 2019, half of older Americans living on their own lacked the income needed to pay for their basic needs,” Mutchler says.
•••
So what does a strategy consultancy do, exactly?
Marketplace’s Kimberley Adams recommends
this article on business consulting firm McKinsey & Co. Research has shown that when companies employ the services of firms like McKinsey, it often leads to things like layoffs and higher executive pay — among the key drivers, more broadly, of today’s rising inequality.
This Make Me Smart newsletter is written by Erica Phillips.
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