Business History

Jim Simons loved cigarettes and math. He started out as an academic mathematician and a Cold War code breaker - but decided to use his skills to write computer programs to spot investment opportunities in the financial markets.  Simons and his fierce nerds bought up all the data sets they could find - reports, books, magnetic tapes - and built machine learning algorithms to hunt for tiny mark...

Young Warren Buffett became rich in anonymity - but in the 1980s he became a global star. During the excesses of 1980s Wall Street the middle-aged investor was reluctantly drawn into the spotlight to save troubled companies. And then came tech - which suited Buffett's style even less.   Warren Buffett couldn't even use a computer - but everyone was telling him to buy tech stocks. Ho...

Warren Buffett rose from obscurity to become the richest person in the world - and he did it in a unique way. As a boy in Omaha he collected information obsessively - writing down car license numbers and hoarding bottle caps. As a young man, Buffett turned his focus on scouring business accounts to find companies that had hidden value no one else could spot. We tell the story of young Warren Buffe...

The stock market was once a Wild West free-for-all. There were few rules or regulations. Investors were more or less gambling, or manipulating stocks to make a profit. This is the world Jesse Livermore came to dominate. He would often bet against the market, making money when businesses failed.  By 1929, Livermore was rich and famous. And then the Wall Street stock bubble burst. Share prices...

Curt Flood was the best center fielder in baseball and one of the game's highest payed players. He helped the St Louis Cardinals reach the 1968 World Series... but then got traded. The rules said he had no say in the decision. He either could go to Philly, or quit the sport. So Curt decided to sue.        Curt argued that Major League Baseball should act like any other business...

The man who invented the movie camera got on a train in France in 1890 and was never seen again. The wife of Louis Le Prince thought she knew who’d ordered her husband’s disappearance and presumed murder - Thomas Alva Edison. Many people were simultaneously racing to develop moving pictures - so had Edison decided to bump off his closest rival so he could win? The story of who deserves...

Thomas Edison didn’t invent the lightbulb, but he created something more important: the grid. Edison's system of power plants and wires brought lightbulbs to homes and offices and revolutionized modern life. Edison was adamant that direct current (DC) should power America, and attacked competitors who said that alternating current (AC) was better. This sparked a bitter war between Edison and...

Thomas Alva Edison helped transform America and the world. He registered over one thousand patents before he died in 1931 - and we can thank him for advances in electric power, communications technology, music recording and even the movies. But his biggest breakthrough doesn't get nearly enough attention.  In many ways, Edison invented modern inventing. Join Business History hosts Jacob Golds...

It's hard to make money running an airline - but Southwest was profitable every year for nearly five decades. How did it manage it? Business History hosts Jacob Goldstein and Robert Smith explore how a carrier with just four airplanes shuttling across Texas revolutionized flying by offering free whisky, cheap late-night tickets and free-for-all seating allocation.  Southwest developed a winni...

Was the world's most lovable car originally made just to please Hitler? And what links Thomas Edison and the electric chair? From Jacob Goldstein and Robert Smith of Planet Money fame comes Business History, a new show uncovering amazing stories from the history of business.  From sandals to suits, Business History brings to life the greatest innovations, the boldest entrepreneurs and the cra...