The owners of Maximum Fun, founder Jesse Thorn and his wife Theresa, wanted to step back from ownership so they could focus more on family and creative projects. Podcast companies are bought and sold all the time, with increasing frequency lately--but after putting nearly twenty years into building an ethical, sustainable, values-first business that respects and rewards the artists who work with it, they knew that selling the company to a media megacorp wasn't the right answer. If the Thorns wanted to make sure Maximum Fun would stay true to the values it was built on, there was only one group they could trust to make that happen: the workers.