Busted Business Bureau Christian Borkey

If you're looking for a season finale where I nearly spit out my Diet Coke several times, this episode is for you. I'll be honest: I wrote a pretty solid script involving Hertz's century-long history with highlights including consistent overcharging, under-delivering on vehicles, becoming a meme stock, and commiting insurance fraud. However. Meg Harris is the funniest person alive and I forgot to say like half the things in my script. Is this the most research-ey the podcast has ever been? No. But I'm an entertainer, not a journalist, so this is a bangin' episode.
Check out They Call Us here: https://www.theycallus.com/
Here's where you can find my Patreon (where I WILL be uploading content during the break before season 5!!): https://www.patreon.com/bustedbizbureau
SOURCES: 
-https://abcnews.go.com/Business/rental-car-place-doesnt-hold-reservation/story?id=40626341
-CASETEXT: Moretti V Hertz: https://casetext.com/case/moretti-v-hertz-corp
-https://www.forbes.com/sites/tanyamohn/2016/06/30/rental-cars-now-safer-due-to-new-federal-law/?sh=18bfc9776171
-https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-12-02/hertz-mistakenly-took-kate-klonick-for-a-ride
-https://americanbusinesshistory.org/john-hertz-his-innovations-touch-millions-but-few-know-his-story/
-https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1994/07/10/oj-and-hertz-the-rise-and-fall-of-a-rent-a-star/fcee117c-d7c1-442c-a46a-da3f3e797488/
-https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Frissora
-https://www.sec.gov/enforce/33-10601-s
-https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikakelton/2019/05/02/hertz-makes-a-rare-move-by-suing-former-executives/?sh=54f8304c33e7
-https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2021/12/car-rental-shortage-covid/621068/
-https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/dec/17/hertz-car-rental-accused-customers-auto-theft 
 

Longtime friend, firsttime caller Jon Oppenheimer finally joins my podcast to continue my tradition of not being quite topical by analyzing a months-old news thing: Southwest Airlines! December 2022 was far from the company's only meltdown that caused nationwide disaster. But Jon asked me to make this episode because we all had questions after the incident: why do we have so few choices of air travel yet so few consequences for airlines when they completely boof it? Who is in charge here? Is this how it's always gonna be? The history of commercial aviation in the US is actually f*****g nutty, and the road to where we are now is paved with blood. This is a very dense and dry episode, which is kind of a fun twist for moi! Starting with the air mail scandal from the 30s through the airline deregulation act of 1978 through the present, this is a real highlight real of the relationship between the federal government and private airline companies. Also I whip out an incredible Lois Griffin impression about 42 minutes in. What's not to love? 
Follow @joppenflopper and tell him a better twitter name
Also follow @BustedBizBureau on all social media for more fabulous stuff from me. As always if you like the show, I'm on Patreon.com/BustedBizBureau THANKS!!
SOURCES: 

Mixed Emotions After Cemetery Near O'Hare Moved, Phil Rogers, NBC Chicago, April 2013
Supreme Court allows mass grave exhumation to make way for O'Hare runway, Jake Griffin, Daily Herald, Jan 2011
The Air Mail Fiasco, John T. Correll, Air and Space Forces Magazine, March 2008
https://stjohnsfamilyassistance.com/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Berger_Group

You can find financial data on how much O’Hare charges airlines for rent by year here: https://www.flychicago.com/business/CDA/factsfigures/Pages/financial.aspx
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Mail_scandal_accidents_and_incidents
A Tiny Line Takes On Braniff in a Price War, NYT Staff, 1973
Southwest Airlines, Keli Flynn, Texas State Historical Association, 2022

All I can say is I knocked it out of the park with this one. I'm finally telling my sweet friend Cookie the story of my absolute FAVORITE scammer: Liz Carmichael. This one's got everything: libertarian science fiction, engineering mishaps, three wheeled cars, stock fraud, Unsolved Mysteries, and a woman so magnetic that she girlbossed millions of dollars despite having NO PRODUCT. I sincerely mean it when I say that I am obsessed with her. 
This episode honestly evades my descriptive writing skills -- in part because I've worked 14 days in a row, in part because it's got so much going on. I promise this is a great one. Go to splitendsfilm.com and watch Cookie's awesome movie!
FOOTNOTES: 
1) History’s Greatest Automotive Mysteries, Myths, and Rumors Revealed, Preston Lerner and Matt Stone 2012
2) The Strange Case of the Dale, Walt Woron, New York Times Oct 1975
3) Liz Carmichael's Dream Buggy Turns into a Nightmare, People Magazine Staff, 1975
4) The Trans Women Behind HBO’s Tale Of This Mysterious, Audacious Automaker, Dawn Ennis, Forbes 2021
5) https://www.hemmings.com/stories/2021/05/21/dale-cliffts-original-three-wheeler-prototype-emerges-from-hiding-after-decades-heads-to-petersen
6) https://www.hemmings.com/stories/article/1974-twentieth-century-dale
7) People v Carmichael (1980) https://caselaw.findlaw.com/ca-court-of-appeal/1833667.html
8) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayn_Rand
9) The Lady and the Dale, HBO Docuseries, Zackary Drucker and Nick Cammilleri 2021

My beloved friend Derry Queen joins me for a real fast-and-loose episode about RuPaul's Drag Race. This one was a very fun episode for me because it's less heavy on the research since Derry has a lot of personal experience relating to the show. The standard working conditions in reality TV are absolutely bonkers, and we talk about some of that history.
Don't forget to vote for ME for best podcast in the Chicago Reader, and don't forget to NOT VOTE FOR DERRY as best drag queen. Please vote for Irregular Girl!!! She is fucking awesome. If you like drag and you live in Chicago, you should absolutely check out her work. 
SOURCES: I made it up
-Tired, Tipsy, and Pushed to the Brink, Edward Wyatt, NYT 2009
-Reality TV's Low-Wage and No-Wage Work, Tanner Mirlees, Alternate Routes: A Journal of Critical Social Research, 27.
-REALITY’S KIDS: ARE CHILDREN WHO PARTICIPATE ON REALITY TELEVISION SHOWS COVERED UNDER THE FAIR LABOR STANDARDS ACT?, Adam P. Greenberg, Southern California Law Review 2018
-Reality TV's worker scandal: Shows accused of stealing millions in wages, Josh Eidelson, Salon.com 2013
-Shantay, You Pay: Inside the Heavy Financial Burden of Going On ‘Drag Race’, Rachel Miller, VICE 2021.
-PEG countersuit v Adore Delano
-Reality TV: The Work of Being Watched, Mark Andrejevic, 2004
-Bussy Queen's season 14 contract review on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=700Nvfa4wHk&t=757s&ab_channel=BussyQueen

Remember when Juul was a verb? The generecized word for vape? I REMEMBER! That business really came and went like a beautiful comet. Joining me to talk about the historic rise and fall of Juul is my dear friend Emma Day! The legal machinations behind regulating cigarettes is FASCINATING, and the status of cigarettes in the law affects the ways we make e-cigs. Also, we just talk about the smoking cessation industry in general, which is a hilarious thing we invented to solve the problem of overproducing unbelievably addictive yet dangerous objects. Emma is so f*****g funny, please listen to her podcast Do You Have a Sec? everywhere!
SOURCES: 
Books: 
The Cigarette: A Political History, Sarah Milov, 2019
The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, Siddhartha Mukherjee, 2010
Golden Holocaust: Origins of the Cigarette Catastrophe and the Case for Abolition, Robert Proctor, 2011
Web: 
https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/MassvsJuul.pdf
https://www.fda.gov/news-events/fda-voices/how-fda-regulating-e-cigarettes
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02991-w
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-vaping-juul/juul-use-more-than-doubled-among-u-s-teens-young-adults-in-one-year-idUSKBN1ZK2SV
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-12-09/juul-to-pay-1-2-billion-in-youth-vaping-settlement
https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/nicotine-replacement-therapy-market
https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/juul-appeals-block-fda-ban-e-cigarettes-2022-06-24/
PS, I'm nominated for a Chicago Reader Award! Vote for me at this link (under "city life" for "best podcast")
https://chicagoreader.com/best-of-chicago/2022-ballot-voting-nominations/#/gallery/357091644/
 

Blender Bluid and Amy Do are back on the podcast for a VERY absurd episode. We get into the down and dirty of the free market's response to the very USA-based problem of school-based gun violence. As far as the more grim episodes go, this is one that we tried to bring a lot of levity to (especially about 24 minutes in). First we take a look at the products, then the politics, then profit-based active shooter training programs. There's a lot of ways to make money off of national policy failure and consistent tragedy, apparently. 
A little note I want to say to everyone: I think this episode is very important, but I beg of you to not inappropriately share this episode every time there is a mass shooting. It's a (relatively) funny one, and I don't think it's appropriate to plug it under inevitable tragedies. That already happened to my NFL episode in the wake of the Damar Hamlin injury, and I just want to say that it makes me really uncomfortable. I'm proud of my work and I'm SO happy people are spreading it, but I want to do my part in being an upstanding and thoughtful creator. XOXO. 
SOURCES: 
Methodologies for different school shooting tracking statistics: 
1. https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/methodology
2. https://rockinst.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Overview-American-School-Shooting-Study-TASSS.pdf (page 4) 
3. https://www.chds.us/ssdb/methods/
Products/Industry Talk:
1. The Free Market Responds to America’s School Shootings, Ben Schott, Bloomberg, July 2022
2. https://fightingchancesolutions.com/ 
3. Armored school doors, bulletproof whiteboards, and secret snipers, John Woodrow Cox and Steven Rich, Washington Post, 2018
4. Experts cast doubt on high-tech efforts to stop school shooters, Laura Meckler, Washington Post, May 2022
5. CMS staff warned security system didn’t work. The district expanded it anyway., Annie Ma and Fred Clasen-Kelly, The Charlotte Observer, January 2020
6. School security technology at center of fierce debate after Uvalde shooting, Max Zahn, ABC News, June 2022
7. Schools Are Spending Billions on High-Tech Defense for Mass Shootings, Natasha Singer,  New York Times, June 2022 (this is where I got the 3 billion number; the nonprofit is cited here)
8. These Businesses Say They've Got What You Need to Survive a Mass Shooting, Melissa Chan, Time Magazine, Oct 2019
9.