#37 The Fish That Ate The Whale: The Life and Times of America's Banana King

**David Senra** (0:00)
I want to tell you about a one time only limited event that I don't think you're going to want to miss. I am doing a live show with Patrick O'Shaughnessy from the Invest Like The Best podcast in New York City on October 19th. Patrick has interviewed over 300 of the world's best investors and founders for his podcast. I've read over 300 biographies of history's greatest entrepreneurs for my podcast. We'll be talking about what we learned from seven years of podcasting, sharing our favorite ideas and stories, and doing a live Q&A. There will also be special event-only swag. If you live in New York City, I think it's a no-brainer. But if not, I think it's a great excuse to fly in. I've already heard from a bunch of people that bought tickets. They're flying in from other cities. Some people are flying in from other countries. That's setting the bar really high. So I will have at least four shots of espresso or four energy drinks before or during the show so we can make it a night that you'll never forget. If you're interested in attending this unique live event, I will leave a link down below. I highly recommend you get your tickets today. And I hope I get to see you in New York on October 19th. When he arrived in America in 1891 at age 14, Zimurri was tall, gangly, and penniless. When he died in the grandest house in New Orleans 69 years later, he was among the richest, most powerful men in the world. In between, he worked as a fruit peddler, a banana hauler, a dockside hustler, and the owner of plantations on the Central American Isthmus.
He battled and conquered United Fruit, which was one of the first truly global corporations.
Zimurri's life is a parable of the American dream. Not history as recorded in textbooks, but the authentic, cast-strength version, a subterranean saga of kickbacks, overthrows, and secret deals. The world as it really works.
This story can shock and infuriate us, and it does. But I found it invigorating too. It told me that the life of the nation was not written only by speech-making grandies in funny hats, but also by street corner boys, immigrant strivers, crazed and driven, some with one good idea, some with thousands, willing to go to the ends of the earth to make their vision real.
It meant anyone could write a chapter in that book, be part of the story, vanish into the jungle, and re-emerge as a figure of lore.
If you want to understand the spirit of our nation, the good and bad, you can enroll in college, sign up for classes, take notes, and pay tuition.
Or you can study the life of Sam the Banana Man.
So that is from the preface of the book that I want to talk to you about today, which is The Fish That Ate the Whale, The Life and Times of America's Banana King, and this is by Rich Cohen. So this is one of the books that I found using, since I buy so many biographies of entrepreneurs on Amazon, Amazon has recommended this book to me for quite a while, and just it has a fantastic title. So I eventually ordered it, and it just sat in a pile of books that I have that I'm eventually going to turn into future episodes of Founders.
And so I picked it up one day and I started reading and I couldn't put it down. So that's how it kind of jumped ahead of some other books that I had that I thought I kind of thought I knew where I was going next. But this one grabbed me by surprise because it's such a... The writer, this is the first, I think the first book of Rich Cohen's that I've read, but he's really, really talented at telling stories. And it's helpful to start with such an amazing life story as Samuel Zimurri. So let's jump right into the book. Let's not waste any time. And I'm just going to go through it in a chronological order. And as always, I'm going to hit the highlights and the ideas that stuck out to me. If this is your first time listening to Founders, every Founders episode I read a biography of an entrepreneur and then just share ideas and highlights that are interesting to me. It is not meant to be a summary, but it is meant to give you a good idea of who this person was and how they lived their life and some of the ideas they had. Okay, so let's jump right in to the introduction. And it says, He arrived on the docks at the start of the last century with nothing.