Slate Money - Money Talks: The Paradoxes of Patagonia
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3.9 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 2 September 2025
⏱️ 40 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. |
| 0:58.3 | It's all coming up on Money Talks. |
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| 1:56.7 | enterprise managing vendor risk, Banta makes it quick, easy, and scalable. |
... |
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