Money Talks: The Paradoxes of Patagonia
Slate Money
Slate Podcasts
4.1 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 2 September 2025
⏱️ 42 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this Money Talks: Felix Salmon is joined by author and New York Times reporter David Gelles to discuss his new biography of enigmatic Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard, Dirtbag Billionaire. David does a deep dive into what makes the brand and its founder so unique, including the paradoxes of a wildly successful company trying to remain environmentally sustainable and a billionaire who believes all billionaires to be “policy failures.”
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Podcast production by Jessamine Molli and Cheyna Roth.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello! |
| 0:01.0 | Welcome to Money Torts from Sleep Money. |
| 0:17.0 | I'm Felix Tammann and this is the show where we Slate Money hosts interview. |
| 0:22.6 | Interesting people about interesting things. |
| 0:24.6 | David Gellis, welcome. |
| 0:26.6 | Thank you. |
| 0:27.6 | Introduce yourself. |
| 0:28.6 | First of all, who are you? |
| 0:29.6 | My name is David Gellis. |
| 0:31.6 | My day job is being a climate reporter for the New York Times. |
| 0:35.6 | And on the side, I write books. |
| 0:36.6 | And my new book is Dirtbag Billionaire. |
| 0:39.9 | So we are going to talk about one of the most idiosyncratic and interesting CEOs |
| 0:45.9 | that America, or actually technically Canada, has ever produced, the Quebecois, Yvonne |
| 0:52.0 | and a deep paradox embedded in his company, Patagonia. |
| 0:58.0 | It's all coming up on Money Talks. |
| 1:06.0 | Now through September 10th, sky-high elegance at dream prices during the Air France rendezvous. |
| 1:19.6 | It's time to book your flight to Paris at our best prices, only during the Air France rendezvous, with daily flights from New York. |
| 1:27.4 | And with Air France, enjoy a complimentary glass of champagne in all cabins. |
| 1:31.9 | Elegance is a journey. Air France. |
| 1:35.0 | Restrictions apply. See terms and conditions at airfrance.us. |
| 1:38.9 | Okay, so we had you on the last time you wrote a book about CEO, which was your Jack Welch book, and you didn't like him very much. I thought he had a problematic legacy, you could say. He had a problematic legacy. Now you've written a new book, which is kind of dependent to that? I think in many ways it is the other side of the coin. Yvonne Shannard, who the book's about, the founder of Patagonia, he's not without |
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