Brought to you by... - 22: Martha Stewart in the Middle

Less than a decade after Martha Stewart left prison, she was in court again. It was a three-way fight between Martha, Macy's, and JCPenney that could have played out in a middle school cafeteria. And the fight raised an intriguing question: What exactly is a store? PLUS: One listener tells us why Scrubbing Bubbles was banned from her home.


CORRECTION: An earlier version of this episode misstated the current owner of bathroom cleaner Scrubbing Bubbles. It is S.C. Johnson & Son, not Johnson & Johnson.

City of the Future - Live at the Brooklyn Podcast Festival!

For our first live show, co-host Vanessa Quirk moderates a discussion with some of the familiar voices from season 1: Director of Buildings Innovation Karim Khalifa; Director of Mobility for Streets Willa Ng; and Associate Director of Sustainability Emily Kildow. We talk about everything from fire testing timber to congestion pricing to pneumatic tubes.

Thanks to City Farm Presents for having City of the Future at the Brooklyn Podcast festival. 

50 Things That Made the Modern Economy - Index Fund

Warren Buffett is the world’s most successful investor. In a letter he wrote to his wife, advising her how to invest after he dies, he offers some clear advice: put almost everything into “a very low-cost S&P 500 index fund”. Index funds passively track the market as a whole by buying a little of everything, rather than trying to beat the market with clever stock picks – the kind of clever stock picks that Warren Buffett himself has been making for more than half a century. Index funds now seem completely natural. But as recently as 1976 they didn’t exist. And, as Tim Harford explains, they have become very important indeed – and not only to Mrs Buffett. Editors: Richard Knight and Richard Vadon Producer: Ben Crighton (Image: Market graphs, Credit: Shutterstock)