Back

Explore every episode of the podcast Ambition

Dive into the complete episode list for Ambition. Each episode is cataloged with detailed descriptions, making it easy to find and explore specific topics. Keep track of all episodes from your favorite podcast and never miss a moment of insightful content.

Rows per page:

1–7 of 7

TitlePub. DateDuration
Sam Zemurray (America's Banana King)23 Aug 202601:46:46

The greatness of Zemurray lies in the fact that he never lost faith in his ability to salvage a situation. Bad things happened to him, as bad things happen to everyone, but unlike so many, he was never tempted by failure. He never felt powerless or trapped. 

He was an optimist. He stood in constant defiance. When the Secretary of State teamed up with J.P. Morgan and the Honduran government in a way contrary to Zemurray's interests, he simply changed the Honduran government. When United Fruit drew a line at the Utila River and said, "You shall not cross," he crossed anyway. When he was forbidden to build a bridge, he built a bridge but called it something else. 

For every move, there is a countermove. For every disaster, there is a recovery. He never lost faith in his own agency. With his fortune fast diminishing, it was time to act.


This is the story of Sam Zemurray, and we have a lot to learn from him.

Source for this episode: 

Links:

EstĂŠe Lauder09 Aug 202601:33:37

The company she started in 1946 is today worth more than $30 billion. Her story? It's one of obsession and persistence, and one I thoroughly enjoyed reading about. 

This is the story of EstĂŠe Lauder, and we have a lot to learn from her.

Source for this episode: 

Links:

Steve Jobs31 Jul 202602:30:47

In 1968, a thirteen-year-old kid in Cupertino was building a frequency counter and needed parts. So he opened the phone book, found the home number of Bill Hewlett, the founder of Hewlett-Packard, and called him. Hewlett talked with him for 20 minutes, got him the parts, and gave him a summer job.

More than four decades later, when HP abandoned its Cupertino campus, that same kid quietly bought the land, a hundred and fifty acres. By then, his company had passed Microsoft to become the most valuable technology company in the world. But he admired the way Hewlett and Packard had built a company that lasted, and he prided himself on having done the same.

In June 2011, he stood before the Cupertino City Council and unveiled the plans for what would become his company's new home on that ground. It was one of his last public appearances. Four months later, he was gone.

This is the story of Steve Jobs, how he built Apple, and what we can learn from him.

Source for this episode: 

Links:

Dietrich Mateschitz (Red Bull Founder)16 Jul 202601:28:24

At 38, Dietrich Mateschitz was a burned-out toothpaste salesman staring at the same gray airplanes, gray suits, and gray hotel bars, wondering if the next decade would look like the last one. Then he found a strange Thai energy drink, bet everything on it, and built Red Bull into an empire that paid him a record $865 million dividend months before his death and helped him amass a personal fortune worth more than $20 billion.

This is the story of Dietrich Mateschitz, the founder of Red Bull, and we have a lot to learn from him.

Sources for this episode: 

Links:

The Wright Brothers 08 Jul 202601:30:47

They were two bicycle mechanics from Ohio with no formal engineering training and no funding who set out to solve a problem that had stumped the best minds in the world.
 
It took them four years of learning, experimenting, and overcoming numerous challenges, but they accomplished what many people around the world thought was impossible.

This is the story of the Wright Brothers, and we have a lot to learn from them.

Source for this episode: 

Links:

S.I. Newhouse Sr. (The Secretive Media Billionaire)01 Jul 202601:20:39

He dropped out of school at 13 to support his family. His father abandoned them. He worked full time for a decade before buying his first newspaper. By the time he died at 84, he had built the greatest publishing empire in American history.

This is the story of S.I. Newhouse Sr., and we have a lot to learn from him. 

Source for this episode: 

Links:

Trailer: Welcome to Ambition30 Jun 202600:01:14

Ambition is a podcast about history's most ambitious people and the lessons their lives can teach you. Each episode goes deep on one person (or two), built around hours of research into a biography of that subject, covering what they built, how they thought, and the struggles they overcame along the way.

We're kicking things off with two stories: S.I. Newhouse, who built one of the most powerful media empires in America, and the Wright Brothers, two bicycle mechanics from Dayton who flew before anyone believed flight was possible.

New episodes drop every 1-2 weeks. Subscribe to the show in your favorite podcasting platform and follow along at ambition.fm.

Š My Podcast Data ¡ Independent project ¡ Data from Apple & Spotify
AboutMethodologyContactSupport mePrivacy Policy