A spontaneous and unrehearsed interview.

Welcome to episode 64 of Curiosityness.

I'm Travis DeRose, the host, and you're listening to Episode 64 with John Aller.

And John is the author of a book called White Shoe, How a New Breed of

Wall Street Lawyers changed big business and the American century. And it's true. They really

did. This is an interesting story that I think most people haven't heard, but it's about the

lawyers, the white shoe lawyers behind

all the huge businesses of, you know, the 19, like 1890s to 1920-ish era as when they were

around. But like, there are the lawyers behind the businesses of U.S. Steel, like oil, tobacco,

J.P. Morgan, huge companies that I think most people

have a negative perception of, but John tells the full story and admits that they were flawed

individuals and human beings potentially, but shares the good that they offered, like helping the New York City transportation system and creating better borrowing and finance, sorry.

And they really did limit their clients, their large companies.

They really limited the power that they could have and increased transparency. So in a way, they did some

good stuff. So it's an interesting story and something that we're kind of seeing again today

with huge Google, Apple, Amazon, all this stuff. So the story is kind of coming back around again.

And I think if you just give it a chance, you're really going to enjoy it. So without further ado, here is the episode with John Aller right now.

All right. How you doing, John?

Good.

Good to have you, man.

A little hot here in New York.

Oh, is it warm right there?

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