A Book with Legs

In this episode of A Book with Legs, Cole Smead, CEO and Portfolio Manager at Smead Capital Management, sits down with Robert Winder to discuss his book, “Three Rivers: The Extraordinary Waterways That Created Europe.”Robert Winder is the former literary editor of The Independent, where he ran the Independent Foreign Fiction Award for translated novels, and a former deputy editor of Granta. His earlier books include “Bloody Foreigners: The Story of Immigration to Britain,” which helped inspire the Migration Museum, where he was a founding trustee, and “The Last Wolf: The Hidden Springs of Englishness.” “Three Rivers” was named one of the Financial Times’ Best Books of 2025 and earned starred reviews from Kirkus, Booklist and Shelf Awareness.The conversation starts on a single mountain massif in the Swiss Alps where the Rhine, the Rhone and the Ticino, which feeds the Po, are born, and follows them to three different seas. Topics include why the Rhine became both Europe’s superhighway and its most contested border, how the word “rivalry” traces back to rivers, and why Basel, with one of the only early bridges between the Alps and the sea, became a center of printing and Reformation ideas. Winder also covers the 1882 opening of the Gotthard Tunnel, the 1818 glacier flood in the Rhone Valley, Switzerland’s iodine campaign against goiter, and the “year without a summer” that gave the world “Frankenstein.”Through a business and markets lens, Cole and Robert discuss geography as the first mental model, or what Winder calls the invisible hand that shapes everything else. They look at who gets rich at choke points, how the monastic hospices on Alpine passes may have planted the seeds of Swiss banking’s custodial culture, and how Switzerland’s early bet on hydropower helped shelter it from the oil shocks of the 1970s. They also discuss why the farmers living beside the glaciers understood them long before the professors did, and why investors with close knowledge of what they own can have an edge.“Three Rivers: The Extraordinary Waterways That Created Europe,” published by Pegasus Books, is available now: https://pegasusbookstore.com/book/9798897101627Sign up to be notified about new episodes: https://hubs.ly/Q0452V800

Lydia Towns, a world historian specializing in the early modern Atlantic, reframes exploration as a centuries-long story of trade, finance, and risk. She explores Norse resource-hunting, Genoese and Venetian merchant networks, the Black Sea slave trade, and how Columbus adapted plantation economics. Maps, ambition, investor networks, and the unequal rewards of discovery all come under scrutiny.

Erwin Chemerinsky, Berkeley Law’s dean and a leading constitutional scholar, explores the toughest battles over campus speech and academic freedom. He discusses the heckler’s veto, controversial speakers, protest encampments, viewpoint neutrality, Title VI, DEI requirements, faculty discipline, and government pressure on universities. A sharp guide to navigating free expression when institutions face intense political and social pressure.

Cole and Bill Smead explore books on Boeing, financial panics, the dollar, free speech, the Old West, Orwell, and spiritual life. Their discussion draws parallels between AI mania and past technology booms, then turns to Nike’s brand, contrarian investing, hidden leverage, aging investors, and whether five-percent Treasuries could outperform stocks over the next decade.

In this episode of A Book with Legs, Cole Smead, CEO and Portfolio Manager at Smead Capital Management, sits down with Dr. Kenneth Rogoff to discuss his book, "Our Dollar, Your Problem: An Insider's View of Seven Turbulent Decades of Global Finance, and the Road Ahead."Kenneth Rogoff is the Maurits C. Boas Professor of Economics at Harvard University. From 2001 to 2003, he served as Chief Economist and Director of Research at the International Monetary Fund, and earlier in his career was an economist at the Federal Reserve Board. He is the co-author, with Carmen Reinhart, of the New York Times bestseller "This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly," as well as "Foundations of International Macroeconomics" and "The Curse of Cash." He earned his Ph.D. in economics at MIT and is also an international grandmaster of chess.The conversation explores the dollar's position at the center of global finance, from the history of currency dominance dating back to Spain, to the rise of populism and its threat to the dollar's exorbitant privilege, to real, candid stories from Rogoff's own experience meeting Chinese leadership and warning of the country's real estate crisis years before it hit. They also discuss the euro's uneven path, the Mexican peso crisis, and what stablecoins and cryptocurrency really mean for the future of money.Read Kenneth's column here: https://www.project-syndicate.org/columnist"Our Dollar, Your Problem: An Insider's View of Seven Turbulent Decades of Global Finance, and the Road Ahead," published by @YaleUniversityPress , is available now.Sign up to be notified about new episodes: https://hubs.ly/Q0452V800

Adrian Wooldridge, Bloomberg’s global business columnist and former Economist editor, explores liberalism’s intellectual journey from Erasmus and Hobbes to Mill and Tocqueville. He examines free speech, individualism, concentrated tech power, identity politics, populism, education, family, and the struggle to revive a liberal “revolutionary center” before democracy slips toward autocracy or stagnation.

Bryan Burrough, New York Times bestselling author and narrative historian of the Old West. He traces how Southern honor culture, the Colt revolver, and Civil War trauma made Texas the gunfighter crucible. Short vivid stories cover Wild Bill, John Wesley Hardin, Wyatt Earp, cattle drives exporting violence, and how newspapers forged outlaw legends.

In this episode of A Book with Legs, Cole Smead, CEO and Portfolio Manager, and Bill Smead, Chairman and Chief Investment Officer at Smead Capital Management, sit down with Liaquat Ahamed to discuss his book, “1873: The Rothschilds, The First Great Depression and the Making of the Modern World.”Liaquat Ahamed explores 1873 as the first truly global financial crisis, centered on the Rothschild family, then the wealthiest bankers in the world. The conversation traces how the Rothschilds nearly collapsed in 1848, losing 40% of their capital, only to rebuild over the next 25 years into a bank controlling a third of the entire European banking system. Liaquat and the Smeads discuss how market psychology moves in generational cycles, why it can take a full generation to recover confidence after a crash, and how President Grant’s decision to defend the gold standard during the 1873 panic prolonged deflation across the U.S. economy.“1873: The Rothschilds, The First Great Depression and the Making of the Modern World,” published by Penguin Press, is available now.Sign up to be notified about new episodes: https://hubs.ly/Q0452V800

David Williams, author and aviation historian who accessed the Boeing family archives, tells Bill Boeing's journey from timber cruiser to accidental aviation titan. Stories include the balloon that sparked his obsession, hiring genius Wong Tsu against prejudice, a prohibition wiretap scandal that shaped privacy law, the creation of the first flight attendants, and Boeing's reversal from breakup to wartime giant.

Alex Wright, writer and information designer who studies how humans create and circulate information, chats about the wild origins of American newspapers. He traces technological leaps like Linotype and rotary presses, the rise of syndication and advertising, and parallels between 19th-century viral networks and today’s digital media. Short anecdotes range from Mary Katherine Goddard to Mark Twain’s newsroom pranks.