ENCORE: Mike Milken: When Junk Was King | 187

Scamfluencers

Wondery

Society & Culture

4.1 • 7K Ratings

🗓️ 10 November 2025

⏱️ 73 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

We’ll be back next week with a brand new episode. In the meantime, we’re taking you back to the 1980s – a time of greed, glamour, and Wall Street excess – and revisiting the story of the “Junk Bond King,” Michael Milken.

In the early 80s, Michael Milken pioneered a novel way to finance companies that traditional investors normally wouldn’t touch. His high-risk, high-reward investing strategy upended decades of Wall Street norms. And it made celebrities out of Michael and the corporate raiders he funded, like T. Boone Pickens, Rupert Murdoch, and Carl Icahn. Michael did make it possible for smaller companies to access capital. But he did it by breaking norms, ethical codes, and financial regulations in order to manipulate the system at every turn. Though, when stock brokers turn into snitches, even his billions can’t protect him.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hey, Scam Fluencers fans, Sarah here.
0:02.8	If you love the drama, deception, and mind-blowing reveals, Wondery Plus is your VIP ticket to more.
0:09.2	Add free episodes, early access to the juiciest scandals, and deep dives you won't find anywhere else.
0:15.1	Get the full Scam Fluencers experience. Sign up today.
0:19.1	We'll be back next week with all new episodes of scam influencers.
0:23.0	But first, let's rewind for a moment.
0:25.5	Remember our episode on Michael Milken, the junk bond king, who basically rewired Wall Street
0:30.8	in the 80s?
0:32.0	Yes, I do.
0:33.4	Milken was a junk bond pioneer who made billions funding corporate raiders and manipulating global markets.
0:38.7	He helped fuel the decade of excess and then crashed hard when the government came after him for violating securities and tax laws.
0:46.0	While since our last episode aired earlier this year, Milken has been keeping busy, but in a very different way.
0:53.0	On September 20th, he opened the Milken Center for
0:56.2	Advancing the American Dream, or M-A-D-D-D for short. It's a new museum in Washington, D.C. that is,
1:02.7	quote, a cultural institution focused on illuminating pathways to opportunity for all. I love that.
1:09.5	I didn't know you could open a museum to your own nonsense.
1:12.4	I'm going to try that.
1:13.7	Yeah, it's basically a museum of capitalism, and the museum is located across the street
1:18.4	from the White House, and it features five buildings of exhibits and immersive experiences
1:23.0	that, according to a press release, allow visitors to explore how ingenuity and perseverance
1:29.6	have shaped the American dream across generations.
1:33.1	Something is telling me there's more to the story than just that.
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in 7 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Wondery, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Wondery and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.