Hello. I'm incredibly excited to introduce right now the very first episode of Slate Money,

the best podcast in the world. It's the most recent. It's going to cover business and finance and

all things like that. I'm Felix Salmon. I'm the senior editor at Fusion. And today we're going to be

discussing Alibaba, which is this Chinese internet giant company that is soon also going to be a

Cayman Islands special purpose vehicle selling shares on an American stock exchange. We're also going to be talking about

Sothebiz, the auction house, which lost its battle this week with a hedge fund billionaire.

And we'll debate the minimum wage. Is $15 an hour a brilliant policy, a disaster in the making,

or is it not going far enough? And finally, every week we're going to go around the table for a lightning round of interesting

numbers, one number each from this past week.

There are three of us here in New York.

I'm joined by the other two members of the core slate money team.

Kathy O'Neill is a former hedge fund Quant, who then became a central

player in Occupy Kathy. What are you doing these days? Oh, hi, Felix. Thanks for having me. I'm

working at the Journalism School of Columbia, starting a new data journalism program. Sounds very

exciting. And of course, this being Slate, we're joined by Slate's very own Moneybox columnist,

Jordan Weissman.

How did you wind up here, Jordan?

Well, you very kindly asked me, Felix.

How could I say no?

And Jordan came from the Atlantic.

I did.

I was a writer and editor at The Atlantic

...