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She divorced her husband at 9 AM. At 12:30 PM, he bought a lottery ticket that won $40,000,000.
In a staged Southern Justice courtroom episode, Diana Taylor sues her ex-husband Mark for half the prize.
She tells the judge the ticket was bought with money from their shared account. She also says she gave up her career and spent seven years following Mark as he chased his dreams.
Mark brings a receipt showing he bought the ticket after the divorce.
Diana says the winning numbers match dates from their relationship. She points to their wedding, their first date and even their dog's birthday.
Mark says he didn't choose the numbers. The machine did.
He also files a counterclaim for $2,500, which the judge throws out.
The judge rules that the winnings belong to Mark because he bought the ticket after the divorce. Diana gets none of the $20 million she requested.
Kicked her husband out of his own house for their daughter's wedding, then took him to court for $150,000 for refusing to pay for it.
Marisol Ramirez Price sues her husband George for breaching a verbal agreement.
Their daughter wants her biological father to walk her down the aisle instead of George, who has raised her since she was eight years old.
George is hurt by the decision and pushes back. After a family argument, his stepdaughter disinvites him from the wedding, which is supposed to take place at his own house.
When the judge asks where George is supposed to go during the wedding, Marisol replies: “I don't know, Your Honor.”
George calls it the ultimate betrayal.
The judge dismisses the lawsuit, telling Marisol: “Suing your husband into compassion is insane.”
Gunther retweeted
She divorced her husband at 9 AM. At 12:30 PM, he bought a lottery ticket that won $40,000,000.
In a staged Southern Justice courtroom episode, Diana Taylor sues her ex-husband Mark for half the prize.
She tells the judge the ticket was bought with money from their shared account. She also says she gave up her career and spent seven years following Mark as he chased his dreams.
Mark brings a receipt showing he bought the ticket after the divorce.
Diana says the winning numbers match dates from their relationship. She points to their wedding, their first date and even their dog's birthday.
Mark says he didn't choose the numbers. The machine did.
He also files a counterclaim for $2,500, which the judge throws out.
The judge rules that the winnings belong to Mark because he bought the ticket after the divorce. Diana gets none of the $20 million she requested.
$1,000 to star in a movie that pulled in nearly $200 million.
For Jon Heder, that $1,000 was the most money he had ever seen.
Back in 2004, Napoleon Dynamite was a low-budget student project shot for roughly $400,000. The director was his BYU classmate Jared Hess, and Heder took the lead basically as a favor to a friend.
He had no agent, no SAG card and no backend points. Just a single grand in cash.
Then Napoleon Dynamite became a hit at Sundance.
Fox Searchlight bought the film for $4.75 million. It made $46 million in theaters and another $139 million in home video sales. Suddenly, half the country was walking around in "Vote For Pedro" tees.
While the movie made millions, Heder was surviving on occasional "gift checks" from Fox for showing up to promote it.
In 2011, the producers sued Fox for over $10 million in unpaid royalties. They ended up with a $125,000 settlement.
Heder stayed far away from that courtroom.
Did Hollywood take advantage of a naive kid, or did that $1,000 buy him a career he never could have touched otherwise?
Pablo Escobar burned $2,000,000 in cash to keep his daughter warm for a single night.
In late 1993, the Medellín boss was on the run from a joint military task force and rival hit squads. He moved his family between safe houses in the mountains around Medellín every forty-eight hours.
During an unusually cold night in a rundown mountainside safe house, his young daughter Manuela became dangerously ill with hypothermia.
The house had no electricity or blankets, and the fire in the hearth was dying out. With soldiers patrolling the valley, Escobar couldn't risk sending guards to chop wood or search for fuel.
He went to the bags packed with millions in emergency cash, broke open the bundles of hundred-dollar bills, piled them in the hearth, and struck a match.
Over the course of the night, he fed approximately $2,000,000 into the flames. He also used the fire to cook a basic meal for his family.
In the video, his son Sebastián Marroquín recalls hiding with his father during his final days. They had $5,000,000 in cash but were starving.
To the rest of the world, cash represented power and status.
To a desperate father trapped on a freezing hillside, it was kindling.
Gunther retweeted
Lana Rhoades says she kept her son's father a secret without an NDA or a payout.
She says he's an NBA player who has only met their child once. During her pregnancy, she barely heard from him. When he did call, she says he was concerned about whether his identity would stay private.
"He was expecting me to protect him."
According to Rhoades, she hadn't signed an NDA and hadn't received a payout to keep his name to herself. She says she was in love with him, and that was why she kept quiet publicly about who he was.
The expectation of secrecy was there even though, in her account, he was barely checking in on her during the pregnancy.
Then she made a joke about having "NBA DNA in me for 10 months."
The joke didn't include his name, but it referred to the father through the league he played in. She says her phone rang again after she made jokes about him.
"He did not like those jokes."
Lana Rhoades says she kept her son's father a secret without an NDA or a payout.
She says he's an NBA player who has only met their child once. During her pregnancy, she barely heard from him. When he did call, she says he was concerned about whether his identity would stay private.
"He was expecting me to protect him."
According to Rhoades, she hadn't signed an NDA and hadn't received a payout to keep his name to herself. She says she was in love with him, and that was why she kept quiet publicly about who he was.
The expectation of secrecy was there even though, in her account, he was barely checking in on her during the pregnancy.
Then she made a joke about having "NBA DNA in me for 10 months."
The joke didn't include his name, but it referred to the father through the league he played in. She says her phone rang again after she made jokes about him.
"He did not like those jokes."
In 2011, a Bloomberg reporter told Elon Musk that BYD was ramping up electric car production, and that Warren Buffett owned 10%. Musk laughed before he answered.
"Have you seen their car?"
The reporter had seen BYD's cars at the Berkshire Hathaway meeting. He brought up the lower price. Musk wasn't impressed.
"I don't think they have a great product."
Not particularly attractive. The technology was not very strong. Their focus, he said, should be "making sure they don't die in China."
In 2025, BYD sold 2,256,714 battery electric cars. Tesla delivered 1,636,129.
Matt Damon turned down a $250,000,000 offer from James Cameron for the lead role in Avatar.
In 2006, Cameron called Damon about starring in a sci-fi film called Avatar.
Cameron wanted a proven A-lister for the lead role. He offered Damon 10% of the film’s entire box office gross.
But Damon was finishing The Bourne Ultimatum. Taking the role in Avatar meant leaving post-production and walking out on director Paul Greengrass and his crew.
Damon said no.
Cameron told him: "This movie doesn't need a star. If you pass, I'll discover some unknown guy."
The role went to Sam Worthington for scale.
Avatar went on to gross nearly $2.9B worldwide. Damon’s 10% cut would have earned him roughly $250 million.
Damon still jokes: "You will never meet an actor who turned down more money."
Jamie Dimon called Bitcoin buyers stupid when it was trading at around $4,000.
Bitcoin went on to rise over 1,500% after that speech.
In 2017, JPMorgan's CEO compared it to the 17th-century tulip bubble.
He said he would fire any of his traders who bought it:
"I would fire them in a second. For two reasons: it's against our rules, and they are stupid."
Listen to how certain he sounds. The head of one of the world's biggest banks saw the asset as a fraud and its buyers as fools.
JPMorgan later became an authorized participant for BlackRock's Bitcoin ETF.
Dimon's own bank now builds blockchain systems for institutional clients.
First they mock you, then they take a 1% management fee on your asset.
Did Wall Street finally lose to Bitcoin, or just take control of it?
Gunther retweeted
Ryan Reynolds paid Deadpool's writers from his own salary so they could stay on set.
He had spent nearly a decade trying to get the first film made. When Fox finally approved it, he still couldn't get the studio to pay for Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick to be there during filming.
The two writers had worked on the script with him for at least six years. Reynolds wanted to keep that team together while they shot it.
"I took the little salary I had left and paid them to be on set with me so we could form a de facto writers room," he told The New York Times.
Reese and Wernick confirmed it back in 2016: Fox wouldn't pay for them to be on set. Reynolds paid out of his own pocket.
He later said he hadn't been expecting a hit when the film was approved.
In the interview below, he talks about what the small budget forced them to do. Tim Miller, he says, "squeezed $10 out of every dollar they gave us."
Ryan Reynolds paid Deadpool's writers from his own salary so they could stay on set.
He had spent nearly a decade trying to get the first film made. When Fox finally approved it, he still couldn't get the studio to pay for Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick to be there during filming.
The two writers had worked on the script with him for at least six years. Reynolds wanted to keep that team together while they shot it.
"I took the little salary I had left and paid them to be on set with me so we could form a de facto writers room," he told The New York Times.
Reese and Wernick confirmed it back in 2016: Fox wouldn't pay for them to be on set. Reynolds paid out of his own pocket.
He later said he hadn't been expecting a hit when the film was approved.
In the interview below, he talks about what the small budget forced them to do. Tim Miller, he says, "squeezed $10 out of every dollar they gave us."
Gunther retweeted
Five billionaire investors laughed at a guy selling a Wi-Fi doorbell. They passed on a company that later sold for over $1 billion.
Watch Jamie Siminoff pitch DoorBot on Shark Tank in 2013. He asked for $700,000 for 10% of his company. That put its value at $7 million.
Look at how the Sharks smile and brush off his idea. They make fun of the design. They joke that thieves will just steal the doorbell. They tell him he can't compete with big tech companies.
Siminoff left without a deal, close to tears. His company was running out of money.
He didn't quit. He changed the name from DoorBot to Ring.
Five years later:
amazon bought Ring for over $1 billion.
siminoff returned to Shark Tank as a billionaire guest judge, sitting next to the investors who had turned him down.
Even the smartest investors can be wrong 90% of the time.
What is the greatest comeback story in startup history?
Five billionaire investors laughed at a guy selling a Wi-Fi doorbell. They passed on a company that later sold for over $1 billion.
Watch Jamie Siminoff pitch DoorBot on Shark Tank in 2013. He asked for $700,000 for 10% of his company. That put its value at $7 million.
Look at how the Sharks smile and brush off his idea. They make fun of the design. They joke that thieves will just steal the doorbell. They tell him he can't compete with big tech companies.
Siminoff left without a deal, close to tears. His company was running out of money.
He didn't quit. He changed the name from DoorBot to Ring.
Five years later:
amazon bought Ring for over $1 billion.
siminoff returned to Shark Tank as a billionaire guest judge, sitting next to the investors who had turned him down.
Even the smartest investors can be wrong 90% of the time.
What is the greatest comeback story in startup history?
Steve Ballmer laughed at the iPhone in 2007.
"$500? Fully subsidized? With a plan? That is the most expensive phone in the world. And it doesn't appeal to business customers because it doesn't have a keyboard."
Microsoft's CEO saw the price and the missing keyboard as reasons Apple would struggle. Physical buttons were familiar to business customers. A phone without them looked like a bad fit.
Microsoft already had Windows Mobile. Apple was asking people to give up those buttons for a bigger touchscreen.
Look at how that worked out:
• Windows Phone is dead.
• The iPhone generates over $200 billion in annual revenue.
Ballmer's objection is what makes the clip. He singled out the missing keyboard as a weakness. The industry went on to adopt that design.
Which feature are companies defending today that customers would happily give up?
Gunther retweeted
Tim Cook's answer to an Android video complaint: "Buy your mom an iPhone."
At the Code Conference in 2022, a journalist told Apple's CEO he couldn't properly send videos to his mom because she had an Android phone.
Cook didn't offer a fix for sending videos between the two platforms. He told him to buy her a different phone.
The exchange got a laugh. It also gave critics a clear example of the problem: someone asked why two phones couldn't work better together, and Apple's CEO suggested buying another Apple device.
The US Department of Justice later quoted Cook's words in its antitrust complaint against Apple. Apple has since added RCS support, improving messaging between iPhones and Android phones.
The joke is easy to remember. So is the proposed solution: your mom needs to buy into the same ecosystem.
How much inconvenience is acceptable to keep people inside Apple's ecosystem?
Tim Cook's answer to an Android video complaint: "Buy your mom an iPhone."
At the Code Conference in 2022, a journalist told Apple's CEO he couldn't properly send videos to his mom because she had an Android phone.
Cook didn't offer a fix for sending videos between the two platforms. He told him to buy her a different phone.
The exchange got a laugh. It also gave critics a clear example of the problem: someone asked why two phones couldn't work better together, and Apple's CEO suggested buying another Apple device.
The US Department of Justice later quoted Cook's words in its antitrust complaint against Apple. Apple has since added RCS support, improving messaging between iPhones and Android phones.
The joke is easy to remember. So is the proposed solution: your mom needs to buy into the same ecosystem.
How much inconvenience is acceptable to keep people inside Apple's ecosystem?
Gunther retweeted
At 18, Aaron Carter says he owed $7.8 million in taxes his parents never paid.
He had sold a million albums before turning 10. His second album sold more than 3 million copies in the US. He toured with the Backstreet Boys and Britney Spears.
Carter says his parents never paid those taxes. He says he also wasted money on cars, shoes and things he calls stupid.
Years later, he was performing off-Broadway for $654 a week. He says he did 500 shows because it was the only place willing to hire him. The IRS was taking money out of his wages.
By 2013, his bankruptcy filing listed just over $8,000 in assets and more than $2 million in debt, including a $1.3 million tax lien.
Carter says the judge gave him a choice that could send both parents to prison for 10 years each.
“I will never let you put my parents in prison, no matter how dirty they've been to me.”
At 18, Aaron Carter says he owed $7.8 million in taxes his parents never paid.
He had sold a million albums before turning 10. His second album sold more than 3 million copies in the US. He toured with the Backstreet Boys and Britney Spears.
Carter says his parents never paid those taxes. He says he also wasted money on cars, shoes and things he calls stupid.
Years later, he was performing off-Broadway for $654 a week. He says he did 500 shows because it was the only place willing to hire him. The IRS was taking money out of his wages.
By 2013, his bankruptcy filing listed just over $8,000 in assets and more than $2 million in debt, including a $1.3 million tax lien.
Carter says the judge gave him a choice that could send both parents to prison for 10 years each.
“I will never let you put my parents in prison, no matter how dirty they've been to me.”
Gunther retweeted
In 2014, Warren Buffett promised $1,000,000,000 to any ordinary person who could correctly predict one entire sports tournament bracket.
Spoiler: he made millions before the tournament was even halfway over.
It all started when mortgage giant Quicken Loans wanted to run the biggest advertising promotion in US history. The idea was simple: anyone could enter for free by filling out a bracket for the NCAA college basketball tournament, known as March Madness. Pick the winners of all 63 games, and you win $1 billion.
But under US law, you can't just promise a billion dollars. The organizer has to insure the prize through a financial backer that can actually pay it. The only person with the money to cover a check that big without a mountain of paperwork was Warren Buffett, through his company Berkshire Hathaway.
The whole country went crazy. Around 15 million people stayed up late, studied college basketball stats, and submitted their picks. The press seriously debated what the 83-year-old billionaire would do if someone simply got lucky.
But Buffett wasn't watching basketball. He was looking at the math:
If you picked the winner of each of the 63 games by flipping a coin, your chance of getting every pick right was 1 in 9.2 quintillion.
Even if you were a top sports analyst and knew the clear favorites in the early rounds, your chance of filling out a perfect bracket was about 1 in 128 billion.
For taking on this "huge risk," Berkshire Hathaway received an insurance fee from Quicken Loans. Insiders estimated it at $10 million to $15 million.
It was all over within 48 hours.
In the first round, the University of Dayton, an 11th seed, unexpectedly beat the favorites, Ohio State. Then Harvard knocked out Cincinnati.
By Friday evening, after just the 25th game out of 63, officially not a single person in the world had a perfect bracket left.