Crazy Money With Paul Ollinger

Barry Meier is a former investigative reporter at The New York Times and the author of the book, Pain Killer: An Empire of Deceit and the Origin of America's Opioid Epidemic, which explores how the Sackler family's greed catalyzed a plague of addiction and death that has destroyed families and whole communities across the country. Between 1999 and 2000, 564,000 Americans died from an opioid overdose. In 2020, the most recent year for which statistics are available, there were over 68,000 opioid overdoses in the U.S. That's 188 per day and each one of these deaths represents a son or daughter, a brother or sister or a mother or father, who is not coming back. People died of opioid overdoses before the 1996 launch of OxyContin, but it’s clear that Oxy and Purdue Pharma’s (owned by the Sacklers) aggressive and deceptive marketing practices threw gasoline on a spark that has turned into a raging wildfire. In 2023, Netflix will launch a miniseries based on Pain Killer. In our conversation today, Barry and I disc

Where do you sit on the social hierarchy? You might not think about it daily, but if I asked you to compare your status to that of one of your friends, you'd probably know the answer: above some, below others, and probably on about the same level as most. Perhaps you'd follow up with questions like “Do you mean who has more money? Or who has more recognition in the community or who's more attractive or physically fit?” This request for clarification demonstrates the nature of status, and how we go about gaining it and retaining it, whether or not we are conscious of our efforts to do so. My guest this week is Will Storr. He's the author of a fascinating book called The Status Game. The author of six critically acclaimed books, including The Status Game, Selfie, and The Science of Storytelling, Will’s writing has appeared in The Guardian, The Sunday Times, The New Yorker and the New York Times. And his journalism has been recognized with awards from the National Press Club, the One World Press and Amnesty In

This episode is Part Two of our Money in College Sports: NIL series. Until last year, college athletes were prohibited from collecting any compensation. But today, thanks to Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) deals, the stakes are high and getting higher. To make sense of this issue, I speak with A J Vaynerchuck from Vayner Sports and Laine Higgins from the Wall Street Journal. A J Vaynerchuk is the co-founder of sports management agency, Vayner Sports where he has been a part of several NIL deals for some of the top athletes in the country. We talked about what brands are looking for when they partner with college athletes, how big the deals have gotten, the specifics of the deals he's done with Dr. Pepper and Kool-Aid, and we go down the road and think about just what college sports are going to look like in the next five to ten years. Laine Higgins is a former college athlete and is now a sports reporter for The Wall Street Journal where she covers, among other things, college sports. She and I discuss Title

The news from the economic world is pretty bad right now. Inflation up and the stock market’s down, which means we're all experiencing some degree of financial stress. Here to help us put it all in perspective is Ken Honda. Known as Japan’s Zen millionaire, Ken’s book Happy Money has sold over 8 million copies worldwide. In this, his second visit to Crazy Money, we talk about: What economic fear, uncertainty and doubt can do to our health and our relationships; How we can maintain peace of mind when those around us are losing their minds; How to be a good spouse during times of financial trouble; The games that shame and guilt play with our minds; How inflation can actually help us get clarity around our priorities, and lastly, we talk about a few of the lessons from Japan's lost decades of economic stagnation.

Spencer Jakab is the editor of The Wall Street Journal's Heard on the Street column and the author of a fascinating new book called The Revolution That Wasn't: Gamestop, Reddit, and the Fleecing of the Retail Investor. In January of 2021, a large group of small investors from the WallStreetBets subreddit rallied around the stock of video game retailer GameStop, which they believe had been unfairly attacked by short-selling hedge fund Melvin Capital. The subsequent and totally unexpected rally in the stock made millions for several WallStreetBets members and crippled Melvin Capital which was lost up to a billion dollars *per day* during the worst of the short squeeze. On this week's episode, Spencer and I talk about the perfect storm of market, societal, and technological factors that catalyzed the Gamestop phenomenon, why the Robinhood stock trading app (which played a major role in this whole scenario) was designed to function exactly like a sports gambling app. We talk about how WallStreetBets and Robin Hoo

Up until last year, no college athlete could legally, officially accept compensation for playing a sport at his or her college. That changed last year with a Supreme Court ruling that now allows college athletes to be compensated for the use of their Name, Image and Likeness (NIL). On today's show, I talk to Darren Rovell, a sports reporter who spent 18 years on the air with CNBC and ESPN and now a senior executive producer at the Action Network. I also talk to John Staton, who is the Director of Operations at Classic City Collective, an organization of donors and alumni dedicated to helping the athletes at the University of Georgia, which John used to be. We discuss how the transfer portal effectively makes every college player a free agent. We talk about how many NIL deals are happening, who they're happening for and how big they're getting. We discuss how collectives interface with athletic departments. We talk about whether money might poison relationships in the locker room within teams, and just what th

Saudi-backed LIV Golf is throwing hundreds of millions of dollars at top pro golfers in an attempt to lure them away from the PGA Tour. The Tour is responding with massively-increased prize money and more player-friendly tournaments. Here to discuss these unprecedented changes and their unsavory ramifications is Rich Beem, winner of the 2002 PGA Championship and analyst for SKY Sports Golf. Rich shares his candid and often funny insights into where this crazy mess is headed, which league is in a stronger position, whether LIV golfers will be able to play major tournaments like the Masters or The Open Championship, whether PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan is sleeping well at night, and why his dog is named after a town in Minnesota. We also discuss the history of money in golf and how Tiger Woods changed the game forever.

Maitland Ward is an adult film star and author of a new book called Rated X: How Porn Liberated Me from Hollywood. Best known for her role as Rachel Maguire on Boy Meets World, Maitland enjoyed a successful career as a Hollywood actress before making the transition into the adult film industry. Her videos and photos on OnlyFans now earn her over $1 million per year. And that's in addition to the money she makes making adult films. Rated X is her first book, and I gotta tell you, I found it to be surprisingly well written. She's a good writer. You're also going to find her both smart, articulate and disarmingly normal. She's like a regular person who just happens to have a very, very unique job. In today's interview, we discuss how she got into acting in the first place, Maitland's experience on Boy Meets World, the cold indifference of Hollywood, which she experienced as she approached her 30th birthday, how and why she got started on OnlyFans, how her husband (that's right, her husband) and her parents (that

I've got a great conversation to share with you today about international banking, massive drug cartels and billions and laundered money. My first guest is Chris Blackhurst. He's the author of a book called Too Big to Jail: Inside HSBC, the Mexican drug cartels and the biggest banking scandal of the century. And if you think about that, we've already had a couple of big banking scandals, so this is a big one. The book tells the story of how HSBC ignored money laundering laws and processed BILLIONS in dirty cash for notorious drug lord and murderer El Chapo in the early 2000s and into the 2010s. One of the characters we meet in the book is a guy named Everett Stern, who was an anti money laundering compliance officer at HSBC. Everett saw how intentionally lax HSBC's methods were for identifying and reporting to the government suspicious activity going on within its banks. He turned whistleblower and started sharing his story with the CIA, Everett has appeared in the Netflix documentary Dirty Money, and he's wr

Carlos Ghosn is the former CEO of both Renault and Nissan. Japanese authorities arrested him for (allegedly) paying himself tens-of-millions in unreported income (and some other shady stuff). Carlos escaped the brutal Japanese judicial system by having himself smuggled out of the country in a box! My guests Nick Kostov and Sean McLain are Wall Street Journal reporters whose new book, BOUNDLESS: The Rise, Fall, and Escape of Carlos Ghosn chronicles the former globe-trotting executive’s meteoric rise up the corporate ladder, fall from grace, and stunning escape that has left him an international fugitive. This story is *bonkers* and you have to hear it to believe it.

Why in the world is student debt treated differently than all other kinds of debt? Why does the cost of college keep sky-rocketing? Why do colleges and universities have so little skin in the game when it comes to the debt students incur to attend these institutions? On this week’s Crazy Money, Oren Cass helps answer these important questions about higher education in the U.S. The author of ‘The Once and Future Worker: a Vision for the Renewal of Work in America,’ Oren’s recent article ‘The Banality of Student Loans’ (link below) outlines the contradictions and self-defeating policies that have led us to this educational morass. Oren and I discuss why we have a “college for all” approach and why it is the wrong way to prepare the vast majority of young Americans for a career–especially those who need an economic boost the most. We talk about why the federal government should not underwrite student loans and who should. He argues that colleges and universities should take more accountability for the price and

Ben Carlson is the Director of Institutional Asset Management at Ritholtz Wealth Management and the author of several books about investing. He is the founder of the blog ‘A Wealth of Common Sense’. He is, also, a co-founder and co-host of the podcast, Animal Spirits with Michael and Ben, which is an informative and fun podcast about the markets and the economy, et cetera. On this week's episode, Ben and I discuss inflation and how it relates to the stock market. This market we find ourselves in, is still very bearish this year and still quite confusing, which is something else we discuss why everything is so confusing. How can we have a recession and very low unemployment?  We also discussed 90s Hip Hop. Ben lists the three books he would assign to a 25 year old who wants to learn about money. We talk about what we should and shouldn't do in the stock market is battered and bloody. And we talked about where there is hope for the future of our economy.  All this and more with Ben Carlson

Andrew Yang is a former Presidential candidate and the founder of Venture for America. He's also the founder of the Forward Party where he advocates for structural reform to safeguard our democracy. He lays all this out in his new book, Forward, which we discussed today. We also discuss Andrew's life as a teenager, his obsession with post-punk bands like The Smiths, Depeche Mode, and Nine Inch Nails, why he didn’t do drugs as a teenager, and how his parents felt when he got his ear pierced. More to the point of his political career, we talk about how money is the tail that wags the dog and both the GOP and the Democratic Party. He mentions why we should pay our politicians more and we talk about entitlement reform and universal basic income. Even if you don't agree with all his policy ideas, I think you'll agree that Andrew’s efforts to fix the machine of politics are worthwhile and something we should all think about supporting because the current polarized political system is making everybody freaking miser

Today’s guest is Coleman Hughes, he's a writer, podcaster and opinion columnist who specializes in issues related to Race, Public Policy and Applied Ethics. He has been featured in the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The National Review, Quillette, The City Journal and The Spectator. He's appeared on many TV shows and podcasts including Real Time with Bill Maher, Making Sense with Sam Harris and the Jordan B. Peterson podcast.  He's also a rapper who goes by the name Coldxman and his latest tracks can be found on Spotify and YouTube. In today's episode Coleman and I talk about the Racial Wealth Gap and its origins, why government action including reparations is not a solution whether a hundred percent of equality among all races is possible or even desirable, how progressive policies that supposedly help African-Americans are actually holding them back and what issues we should focus on if we actually want to empower Black Economic Autonomy. All this and more with Coleman Hughes.

Sam Dogen left his job in investment banking at age 34 to start his financial newsletter, Financial Samurai. He's got a new book out this week called “Buy This, Not That!” How to spend your way to Wealth and Freedom. Today Sam and I discuss his one word definition of 'Happiness', how wearing the right tie helped him get a job at Goldman Sachs, how he transitioned out of investment banking to become an independent financial writer, how the right plan is the key to surviving inflation and the ups & downs of the stock market, and why he advises young adults to forecast their professional misery. We also discuss his best and worst financial investments and among other things, the return on investment of private vs public school.  If you enjoy Crazy Money, please leave us a rating here.  Follow Paul’s Substack newsletter here. Subscribe to the Crazy Money YouTube channel here. Follow Sam- Twitter - https://twitter.com/financialsamurai  Website - https://www.financialsamurai.com/ Link to book - Buy This, Not That!

Today’s guest is Vitaliy Katsenelson. He's an investor, writer and author of the new book ‘Soul in the Game : The Art of a Meaningful Life’. Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the author of The Black Swan calls the book deep, insightful, inquisitive and civilized, which is a pretty good description of Vitaliy himself.  In this episode we discuss what it was like growing up in Russia, north of the Arctic Circle, how America did and did not fit with his expectations, which were set by all the American movies he had seen before he arrived at age 18. Whether rich people are actually happier, what we can learn about careers in comparison from Franz Schubert and Beethoven, what it means to be a student of life, and what may or may not happen in Ukraine. We recorded this conversation in June (2022). This is coming out in July, so I can't say what has or hasn't happened in the meantime. Just so you know. 

This is an encore episode with Rich Beem, winner of the 2002 PGA Championship, one of professional golf’s four major tournaments. Despite having won twice on tour prior to the PGA, Rich's win at Hazeltine was as unlikely as the groovy dance moves he busted out after sinking his final putt of the tournament. Describing himself as “the luckiest guy in the world,” Rich played the game loose and wide open, but the rising expectations of being a major champion became a distraction, and he never won again on tour. In this chat, Rich speaks candidly about: Selling car stereos and grinding his way up the golf ladder, Finding purpose and meaning in life as his PGA prospects began to dim.  The reason he tells his son that “what you shoot is not you” Why he loves working as an analyst at Sky Sports Rich was born in Phoenix, AZ, grew up in El Paso, TX and played college golf at New Mexico State University. Today Rich plays on the PGA Champions Tour and works as a TV golf analyst on Sky Sports in the UK and Ireland.(

This is an encore epsiode with Professor Barry Schwartz, author of several books, including Why We Work and The Paradox of Choice. I spoke to Barry in August, 2020 about his findings in these two important books. Prevailing social wisdom is that more is better, and that more choices should yield much greater satisfaction. So why is it that the harder we work and the more affluent we become, the more depressed we get? More choice, Barry argues, not only overwhelms us, but raises our expectations and makes us doubt our decision-making. Too much choice increases our anxiety and makes us less happy. Could it be, even in our freedom loving country, that we have gotten too much of a good thing and that we would benefit from some guardrails in our lives? I’m sure there are those who would argue against it, but Barry’s research and conclusions here are quite persuasive. Barry Schwartz taught psychology at Swarthmore College for 45 years and is now Visiting Professor of Management at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Busin

Jay Newman makes BIG bets. In his 40 year hedge fund career, Jay was the guy who fought to recover deca-billion dollar debt defaults by countries like the Congo, Panama, and Argentina. Recouping from these deadbeat governments required long term thinking, stealthy patience, and giant cojones, the same attributes required to publish a debut novel, which Jay did earlier this year. The New Yorker called his new book, Undermoney a combination of “espionage, financial intrigue, and geopolitics with a cynicism developed through years of observing politicians and Wall Street titans up close.” And because the plot lines include Russian oligarchs, private militias, and Vladimir Putin, Undermoney is also “unexpectedly timely.” I’ve read it: it’s juicy and enticing. Learn more about Jay here. 

A.J. Jacobs believes that puzzles can save the world. The famously obscure 4-time New York Times best-selling author of books like The Know-It-All, Thanks a Thousand, and The Year of Living Biblically tells us what we can learn from them in his new book The Puzzler: One Man’s Quest to Solve the Most Baffling Puzzles Ever, from Crosswords to Jigsaws to the Meaning of Life. We talked about some great life lessons A.J. gleaned from puzzles, including: Start with the end in mind Embrace the eraser (i.e. your first impression might not be accurate!), and most importantly, PAY ATTENTION, KNUCKLEHEAD!  Join other readers in the quest to win A.J.’s $10,000 by clicking here.