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Komii)EPISODE 10 De Beers: The Company That Invented Romantic Love

The Diamond Myth Before nineteen thirty-eight, the diamond engagement ring was not a tradition. It was not rare, exactly—it just was not what most people did. Within about forty years it had become close to universal in the United States and had spread to countries with no cultural connection to it whatsoever, including Japan. Now, before you jump to the obvious, this did not happen because diamonds are rare, as they are considerably less rare than the price suggests, nor did it happen because of some deep human instinct about carbon. It happened because a diamond company hired an advertising agency in Philadelphia and handed them a brief unlike almost any other in commercial history: not to sell more diamonds or beat a competitor, but to make people believe something they did not currently believe. Then in nineteen forty seven, a copywriter at that agency wrote four words that have been called the greatest advertising slogan of the twentieth century. And those four words did something...
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Komii) EPISODE 09 Botox: How the Deadliest Substance on Earth Became a Beauty Empire

The Deadliest Beauty Product There is a substance so lethal that a quantity smaller than a grain of salt could kill a room full of people, having been studied as a biological weapon and remaining the reason your grandmother told you to throw away a dented tin. Every year, millions of people pay to have it injected into their face. Now, before you jump to the obvious, nobody planned this, and there was no laboratory where somebody decided to turn a poison into a beauty product. It was found by accident in Vancouver in nineteen eighty-seven by a married couple who were treating something completely unrelated, solely because of a single offhand comment from a patient. And here is the part that should stop you cold: nothing was invented, not one new molecule, and not one new compound. The substance already existed, was already approved, and was already being injected into people. Somebody just noticed what else it did, and the business lesson buried in this is one of the most valuable on t...
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Komii)EPISODE 08 Chanel No.5: The Empire Built on Wartime Silence

 The Ten Percent Bottle This is a bottle of Chanel No. Five, the best-selling perfume in the history of the world. The woman whose name is on the front of it owned ten percent. Now, before you jump to the obvious, she was not cheated, and nobody tricked her. Gabrielle Chanel signed that deal herself in nineteen twenty-four, and at the time it looked like the smartest thing she had ever done. Seventeen years later she went to the occupying German authorities in Paris and tried to take the other ninety percent, using a law designed to strip businesses from Jewish families. She failed. And the reason she failed is one of the most extraordinary pieces of corporate self-defence I have ever come across. I went through the ownership structure of that agreement, the declassified French intelligence material published in twenty eleven, and what the historians who specialise in this period actually say, because they do not all agree, and that argument matters. Here is what I can tell you bef...
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Komii)EPISODE 07 The $60 Billion Powder Scam: The Law That Lets Them Sell You Anything

The Legal Disclaimer Pick up any supplement bottle in America, turn it over, and read the small print on the back. It says that these statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration, and that this product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Almost nobody reads that sentence, yet it is the most important sentence on the bottle because it is not a warning, but a legal permission slip. Now, before you jump to the obvious, this is not a video telling you that vitamins are a hoax, as some of these products work perfectly well. Here is the actual situation: in the United States, a company can put a supplement on the shelf without proving to any regulator that it works, without proving that it is safe, and without proving that it contains what the label says. All of that is completely legal because of one law, passed in nineteen ninety-four, that almost nobody outside the industry has ever heard of. In nineteen ninety-four, there were aroun...
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Komii)EPISODE 06 Nikola Tesla vs J.P. Morgan: The Free Energy Myth

The Wardenclyffe Shaft On the north shore of Long Island, there is a field with a hole in it, specifically a shaft sunk forty metres straight down into the earth and lined with wood. Above it once stood a tower nearly sixty metres high, topped with a steel dome. It was called Wardenclyffe, but it was never finished, and in nineteen seventeen it was pulled down and sold for scrap. You have almost certainly heard the story: Nikola Tesla was about to give the world free, unlimited, wireless electricity, and J.P. Morgan, realising he could not put a meter on it, pulled the funding and buried the future. Now, before you jump to the obvious, that story is wrong—not exaggerated, not simplified, but wrong in the specific details that everybody repeats. Morgan did not withdraw his money, as he paid every dollar he promised; the famous line about the meter appears nowhere in any reliable record; and Tesla did not tear up his fortune for nothing either. But here is why I still wanted to make this...
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Komii)EPISODE 05 Ozempic: The Miracle Drug That Made Denmark Bigger Than LVMH

The Anatomy of a Pen This is Ozempic—an injection pen, plastic, about the length of a marker, with a dial on one end. In a German pharmacy, on the statutory insurance system, a pen of semaglutide has sold for around fifty-nine euros, whereas in the United States, the list price for the same molecule, made by the same company, has run close to nine hundred and seventy dollars a month. Now, before you jump to the obvious, this is not because Americans get a better version, not a different formulation, and not a different factory. It is the exact same drug. And this one molecule did something no product has done in modern European history: it made a Danish company worth more than LVMH, and then worth more than the entire economy of Denmark. So here is the question that does not resolve: if a company can sell this profitably in Germany for fifty-nine euros, what exactly is the other nine hundred dollars for? I went through Novo Nordisk's earnings, the Danish national accounts, the pric...
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Komii)EPISODE 04 Haaland vs Messi, Ronaldo and Mbappe: How Football Built the Perfect Human

The Blueprint of a Modern Machine Erling Haaland reportedly eats around six thousand calories a day. Not protein shakes, but cow heart, liver, tomahawk steaks, raw honey, and enormous quantities of milk. Cristiano Ronaldo does not sleep eight hours a night; instead, he sleeps five separate times in ninety-minute blocks on a protocol designed by a sleep professional. And Lionel Messi spent the first decade of his career being physically sick on the pitch until an Italian nutritionist changed what he ate. Now, before you jump to the obvious, this is not a video telling you these men won the genetic lottery. That is the boring answer, and it is mostly wrong. Somewhere in the last twenty years, elite football stopped treating players as talented young men who train hard, and started treating them as capital assets to be optimised. Four of them are the clearest examples on the planet, and each solved a different problem: Messi solved fuel, Ronaldo solved recovery, Mbappe solved acceleration...
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