Wherever you may be listening, whether it's Beijing or Quito or Cairo, we all probably

have one big cultural reference in common.

Disney.

The memories run deep, don't they?

Mine are listening to a cassette tape of the Lion King and asking my father, what does it

mean to be prepared?

Or studiously counting the number of times I'd seen Pocahontas and it was 11,

which is too many times to have seen Pocahontas.

I asked listeners on Instagram, and the memories were strong for you too.

One got to Euro Disney in Paris and was shocked that Pluto, the dog, spoke French.

Another would skip school once a year on a rainy day. Her mother would drive her to Disneyland, and they'd have the

whole place to themselves, one of her favorite memories. There were also a lot of traumatic memories.

Like, one listener went running to Winnie the Pooh for his autograph, and she looked at his hands

and saw that his costume didn't

have fingers, and she flipped out. Another got lost and put in a room full of lost children,

and she was convinced, like, that's it, I'm going to be adopted by another family, I'm an orphan.

Some listeners' families were anti-Disney because of their older, racist, and anti-Semitic imagery, and we'll talk more about that later.

But in all of our childhood memories, Disney is omnipresent.

This is F.T. Weekend, the podcast. I'm Lila Raptopoulos. We're dedicating this episode to the

massive, complicated, economic, and cultural force that is Disney.

It shaped American culture for almost 100 years, and in turn, the culture of probably every

country around the world. So today, we're exploring what happens when a company with that much

...