When Hernan Lopez founded Wondery in 2016, podcasts were just starting to go mainstream. Five years later, his team had scored a number of hit shows and sold to Amazon for a reported $300 million. Not bad for an immigrant from Argentina who moved to the U.S. in his late 20s with “terrible” English skills.

Before launching Wondery, Hernan worked his way up in television, eventually becoming CEO of Fox International Channels. But despite his experience and connections, he struggled to attract investors and break through in an emerging industry. After the success of shows like Dirty John, Wondery began to take off, and today it’s one of the largest podcast networks in the world, with hundreds of shows in comedy, crime, sports, history and business—including this one!

This episode was produced by Chris Maccini with music by Ramtin Arablouei.

Edited by Neva Grant, with research from Alex Cheng.

Our engineers were Gilly Moon and Maggie Luthar.

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