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When Oracles Err

Paul Morigi
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Stringer/Getty Images

Mark Twain was a literary giant — but a horrible investor. John Maynard Keynes was one of history's greatest economists, but his genius for economics was less helpful to his own investment choices than his mental flexibility. Warren Buffett's investment track record is almost without equal, but he once made a $6 billion mistake.


On today's show, we speak with Michael Batnick, author of Big Mistakes: The Best Investors and Their Worst Investments, about the mistakes made by these famous investors and the lessons we should all learn from those mistakes.

Music by Drop Electric. Find us: Twitter/ Facebook.

Subscribe to our show on Apple Podcasts, PocketCasts and NPR One.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

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Stacey Vanek Smith is the co-host of NPR's The Indicator from Planet Money. She's also a correspondent for Planet Money, where she covers business and economics. In this role, Smith has followed economic stories down the muddy back roads of Oklahoma to buy 100 barrels of oil; she's traveled to Pune, India, to track down the man who pitched the country's dramatic currency devaluation to the prime minister; and she's spoken with a North Korean woman who made a small fortune smuggling artificial sweetener in from China.
Cardiff Garcia is a co-host of NPR's The Indicator from Planet Money podcast, along with Stacey Vanek Smith. He joined NPR in November 2017.