Dawn of the Lead: Herb Simon and Ira Rennert

Zero Sum Empire

I’ll be honest, we didn’t do our best pun work with the title for this episode. Dawn of the Dead was filmed in a mall, and we talk about malls…and we also talk about lead poisoning, so…it kind of makes sense? We promise to do better in the future. We begin by reading a review of the new arcade/taco restaurant in Duluth. I’m hard on Duluth sometimes, but it’s actually a great place and you better learn to love it because global warming is going to force all of you to move here in the near future. Billionaires in the news is a sampler this week. We talk about Tom Steyer’s presidential run, Ross Perot’s death, Noam Gottesman’s fake garage, and Jeffery Epstein. I’m excited to talk about Gottesman whenever he gets random-selected by the Big Wheel. He collects Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud paintings. Emanates a real “guy who unironically posts Joker memes” energy. Joe introduces us to Herb Simon in the first billionaire segment (13:10). Simon owns the Indiana Pacers and Simon Property Group. His main business is shopping malls. He’s had some minor scandals involving gift card fees and corporate mismanagement, but we mainly discuss malls themselves. Joe tells us a bit about the history of malls and Victor Gruen’s architectural innovations. We talk about how dead mall infrastructure will be repurposed, and how the “Gruen effect” of trapping people in infinite consumer labyrinths is being distributed across social space as the traditional shopping mall disappears. Chad covers Ira Rennert (37:00), who for many years was the largest private polluter in the US and the owner of the largest private residence. He also gave us the Hummer. Folks, this one is super depressing. Rennert has spent his life knowingly poisoning children for profit and funding “extremist” (read: violent terrorist) Israeli settlements. He pals around with John Bolton and Frank Gaffney. I won’t go into all of the gory details here, I’ll just say prepare yourself to feel extremely angry. Thanks again for listening, and please subscribe, leave a review, share episodes that you like, and spread the word however you can. Duluth: https://www.nytimes.com/video/climate/100000006428078/duluth-climate-change.html Potatriots: https://potatriotsunite.com/ross-perot-left-100-million-to-the-trump-2020-campaign/ Gottesman’s Garage: https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/ny-wealthy-curb-cutting-resident-20190709-bxtufzgiofeyhg6s2k72he6nge-story.html American Mall video game: https://www.bloomberg.com/features/american-mall-game/