Jacob Goldstein
Jacob Goldstein spent more than a decade as co-host of the Planet Money podcast. He's also the author of the book Money: The True Story of a Made-Up Thing, which the New…
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Richard Warren Sears started off selling pocket watches – then published a catalog full of hundreds and hundreds of products from shotguns to cocaine wine. Sears & Roebuck offered even Americans living on remote farms the chance to shop like city dwellers. The catalog became an American institution – the Amazon of the 1890s – but as the nation changed, Sears adapted too and built a vast chain of physical stores.
Sears felt so secure that it built the world’s tallest office building to house all its staff – but then came competition from specialist big-box stores and out-of-town megastores. Sears found itself in a death spiral and couldn’t pull out.
The Hosts
Robert Smith
Robert Smith, co-host of the Business History podcast, is a Professor of Journalism at Columbia University and contributing host of NPR's Planet Money where he tells stories about how the…
