2023 Corporate In Memoriam

2023 Corporate In Memoriam

Author: Charts & Leisure December 28, 2023 Duration: 22:46
Corporate researcher, and proprietor of The Trade Journal Cooperative, Tim Hwang joins Ingrid for a nostalgic look back at 2023's notable corporate losses.

Ever wonder what really happens when a giant company stumbles or a once-beloved brand simply vanishes? RIP Corp digs into the fascinating, often surprising stories behind these collapses. Each episode focuses on a single failed business, peeling back the layers to reveal not just what went wrong, but why it mattered. Hosted by Ingrid Burrington, this podcast from Charts & Leisure is more than a post-mortem; it’s a deep dive into the cultural and historical footprints these enterprises leave behind. You’ll hear about flawed strategies, shifting markets, and the human decisions that led to each demise, all set against a rich backdrop of original music and sound design. Think of it as walking through a curated archive of ambition and its limits, where every story offers a lesson about the world we built. The production, led by Meghal Janardan and Mike Rugnetta, ensures these narratives are as engaging as they are informative. For anyone curious about the intersections of history, business, and society, this podcast provides a compelling, thoughtful listen. It’s about understanding failure not as an end, but as a complex chapter in our collective story. Tune in to explore the quiet, and sometimes noisy, corners of the dead mall of business history.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 22

RIP Corp
Podcast Episodes
Little Paper Guys: An Overview of Corporate Personhood [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 27:35
For this episode of RIP Corp, we’re looking at corporate personhood as a concept. How did corporations become people? How did this weird legal fiction become such a powerful defining force in the world? And what would it…
Why Do We Keep Dead Company Merch? [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 20:15
This episode of RIP Corp is about the afterlives of corporate merch—as a collector's item, as nostalgia play, as irony-laden artifact representing the hubris of capitalism—and the ways people live with these artifacts an…
Sex, Lies and Classifieds: The Fall of Backpage [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 49:30
Years before QAnon, myths and distortions about children being sold for sex fueled a politically-motivated moral panic in the name of protecting kids, yet largely targeting sex workers, not sex traffickers. This episode…
In Space No One Can Hear You Sell [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 45:26
This episode of RIP Corp is about Planetary Resources — a company formed to "expand Earth's natural resource base" through asteroid mining — and its ... not quite failure to launch, but failure to conquer the final front…
Pierced Ears to Private Equity: The Rise and Fall of Claire’s [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 40:01
While bankruptcies of familiar retail brands made headlines this past year, you can actually still shop at some of them–JC Penney, Nieman Marcus, Guitar Center. So that’s what this episode of RIP Corp is about: Claire’s,…
It’s a Wonderful RIP Corp Holiday Special [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 26:55
The story of Frank Capra’s Liberty Films, which produced "It’s A Wonderful Life," whose path toward becoming a holiday staple had pretty high body count. The movie destroyed Liberty Films, and some believe Capra’s career…
Blockbuster and Enron and Chill [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 34:48
In March of 2001, Blockbuster and Enron abruptly terminated an exclusive 20-year agreement to deliver video-on-demand to consumers' homes, just eight months after the deal's announcement. By the end of that year Enron wo…