Episode 013 · Cars

The Car So Good It Killed Hudson

A long low black sedan on a show stand under a large HUDSON sign, with other makers signs behind it

In 1929 only Ford and Chevrolet sold more cars than Hudson and its Essex. In 1952 its Hornets won 27 of NASCAR's 34 races. Five decisions later, in 1957, the name was gone, and the merger that ended it created the company that bought Jeep.

*Picture at the top: a Hudson Commodore on its stand at the Amsterdam motor show, 29 April 1948. Photo: Snikkers / Anefo, CC0, via [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Opdracht_Auto._Aut%27s_in_de_RAI,_Bestanddeelnr_902-7165_(cropped).jpg) (Nationaal Archief).*

In 1929 one company on the east side of Detroit built about 300,000 cars. Only two makes of car sold more: Ford and Chevrolet. Twenty-three years later its Hornets won 27 of the 34 races in NASCAR's top series that season. Continue reading

The numbers

300,000cars built by Hudson and Essex in 1929, when only Ford and Chevrolet sold moreTime, 5 April 1948; Mac's Motor City Garage, The Year in Cars, 1929

27 of 34NASCAR top-series races won by Hudsons in 1952, the year Hornet output fell to about 36,000Jayski, 1952 NASCAR Grand National results; Wikipedia, Hudson Hornet

$18mspent retooling for the 1948 step-down, a body Hudson could never afford to replaceTime, 5 April 1948

$10.4mlost in 1953, the year of the Jet, against a profit of $8 million the year beforeHudson's reported result, March 1954

28 yearsfrom third in America in 1929 to the last Hudson in Kenosha in 1957Mac's Motor City Garage, The Year in Cars, 1929, and The Last Hudson

A drawn girl in an apron flinches as a ketchup bottle bursts in her hands, beside a photographed Heinz ketchup bottle and the word PURE with a question mark

Episode 011 · Food

The Secret History of Heinz Ketchup

In 1903 cheap American ketchup fermented in the bottle and was kept from spoiling with chemicals. Henry John Heinz sold a ketchup with no preservative, backed the 1906 pure food law, and in the year the President's own experts found the main preservative harmless in small doses, he advertised against it. He lost the science and won the market.

Michael Jordan in a red 23XI cap, sunglasses and a white zip top sits on his team's pit box at a race, watching the track

Episode 010 · Antitrust

NASCAR Had to Approve His $28 Million. He Sued Anyway

Michael Jordan's racing team refused NASCAR's take-it-or-leave-it charter contract and sued. NASCAR denied abusing its control of the sport, and the case settled on the ninth day of the trial.

Two young men stand behind a shop counter buried in a heap of orange lottery slips, one printing tickets at a terminal

Episode 009 · Lotteries

MIT Grads Bought 700,000 Lottery Tickets for One Draw

On certain nights, a Massachusetts lottery game's $2 tickets won back at least $2.30 each, on average. Four betting teams, among them one run by two MIT graduates and one led by a former shopkeeper from Michigan, bet more than $40 million on it, and the people running the Lottery knew. The state's Inspector General found the buying legal, and the game a financial success for the Lottery.

Drawing of a parking attendant on a grass lot taking a bank note from a woman beside her car, a white canopy behind them

Episode 008 · Monopoly

What Ticketmaster Didn't Want the Jury to See

In April 2026 a New York jury found that Ticketmaster had overcharged concert fans $1.72 a ticket. The Justice Department, which brought the case, had settled with Live Nation and left in the trial's second week. Thirty-three states and Washington DC carried on alone with a lawyer who had eight days to prepare. Live Nation has asked for a new trial, and the judge has not ruled.