Business History: The Secret of Southwest’s Success
Behind the Money
Topher Forhecz
4.4 • 350 Ratings
🗓️ 3 December 2025
⏱️ 52 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week we’re sharing an episode from Business History, a podcast from Pushkin Industries. Former Planet Money hosts Jacob Goldstein and Robert Smith explore what the businesses of the past can teach us about commerce today.
In this episode, Goldstein and Smith look at how Southwest Airlines developed a winning formula that forced its competitors to change how they did business — but then the Southwest model fell apart.
Find Business History on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey there, it's Michaela. Today, I want to share with you another podcast that I think you'll enjoy. |
| 0:06.0 | It's called Business History, and it's from Pushkin Industries. |
| 0:10.1 | Business history looks at how the companies and founders of our past have led us to this current moment. |
| 0:16.9 | It's hosted by former Planet Money hosts Jacob Goldstein and Robert Smith. |
| 0:21.8 | And the episode you're about to hear is all about Southwest Airlines. |
| 0:26.6 | Southwest revolutionized flying and was profitable every year for nearly five decades. |
| 0:32.1 | That is, until their model fell apart. |
| 0:35.0 | If you like what you hear, find business history wherever you get your |
| 0:38.9 | podcasts. And now, here's the episode. |
| 0:49.3 | Pushkin. Too quick? No, it was perfect. Pushkin. Stop. You got it. |
| 0:54.0 | You got it. |
| 1:10.8 | Robert Smith, I'm going to give you a classic business origin story. Do me a favor, Jacob, and just set the scene. |
| 1:14.2 | I want atmospherics. |
| 1:15.7 | It's 1966, San Antonio, Texas. |
| 1:19.9 | And a lawyer named Herb Telleher is drinking wild turkey bourbon and smoking cigarettes, as everyone did in 1966. |
| 1:27.7 | At the St. Anthony Club. great bar name, in Texas. |
| 1:31.5 | And so Herb, he's from New Jersey. |
| 1:34.7 | His dad died when he was 12. |
| 1:36.3 | He worked at the Campbell Soup Factory in high school and college in the summers. |
| 1:41.3 | Grews up to be a lawyer, eventually moves to Texas. |
| 1:43.3 | And on this particular night, |
| 1:45.5 | he's drinking with a client of his named Rowland King. And Rollin's a Harvard MBA, amateur pilot. |
... |
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