With the news of Warren Buffett stepping down as chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, we are revisiting an episode from our two-part series on Buffet.

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 Buffett as he quietly worked building up the expertise and accumulating the wealth that would allow him to become the most famous investor of our age.   

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Herman Petty was a Chicago barber and bus driver who dreamed of running his own business. When his local McDonald's restaurant was abandoned in 1968, Herman approached the company and said he should be the first black American to be given a hamburger franchise. 

Herman and other black pioneers faced unique problems running McDonald's in America's inner cities - but their businesses soon flourished and they fought to make the burger giant listen to its black franchisees and customers.     

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Concluding our story of Andrew Carnegie's effort to break the unions at his Homestead steel factory, we look at how the plant boss Henry Clay Frick enlisted a private army of Pinkerton detectives to confront the steel workers. Gunfire erupts and there are deaths on both sides.   

The so-called battle of "Fort Frick" seems to go the way of the unions - until a young anarchist comes to town hoping to piggyback on the unrest to further his goal of sparking a revolution. He finds a way into Frick's office... and he comes armed with a pistol and a knife.     

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In the first of two shows about the fight between the richest man and the unions at his Homestead steel plant - we look at why Andrew Carnegie decided that his workforce deserved a smaller share of his profits and the lengths he went to to cut their wages.    

Carnegie grew up in poverty and publicly proclaimed that rich moguls such as he had a duty to aid the poor - but that didn't stop him using every weapon at his disposal to crush the steel workers' union. The fight got violent - very violent - and its ripples are still being felt to this day.  

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When America’s first president set off to tour his new country, he had no idea where to stay. George Washington slept in some taverns he described as dirty and grim, but also stayed at some delightful inns. In the 1790s, there was no way for travellers to share tips on the nice places to sleep and those to avoid. 

Fast forward to today and the rise of peer-to-peer services where we book a car ride, rent a vacation home or bid in an online auction, and the same trust problem occurs. How do we know we can rely on a vendor we’ve never met? And how can we praise good customer service with a glowing recommendation? That's why the user review was created.

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This is a special crossover episode with Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford. 

John DeLorean was a top car executive - but he was too maverick to fit into the oppressive corporate culture of GM. He wanted to make a new and exciting sports car - a futuristic stainless steel marvel with distinctive gull-wing doors (which found fame in Back to the Future). He just needed someone to give him millions of dollars to get started. 

The British government agreed to foot the bill, but only if DeLorean built his factory in a troubled part of Northern Ireland. The cars coming off the production line were beset with problems and sales slowed down. Company finances were also strained by DeLorean's spendthrift ways and brazen theft. Finally, someone offered DeLorean a lifeline if only he'd come in on a cocaine deal.   

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Momofuku Ando told the world he invented instant ramen noodles in a shed in his backyard. In Japan, there's not one, but two museums celebrating this breakthrough. Only Ando wasn't the first person to flash-fry noodles to preserve them - but he was willing to sue any rival ramen maker.  

Ando had suffered repeated business failures and even been jailed for tax fraud - but he created an origin story for his instant noodles so compelling that it helped him build a convenience food empire that sent instant ramen everywhere on earth and finally into space.   

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President Jimmy Carter had a brother, and this brother LOVED beer. Billy Carter was a big 1970s celebrity and a struggling brewery decided to bet on him to revive its fortunes. Together they created Billy Beer and launched a huge ad campaign. The beverage was a global sensation... except nobody including Billy liked the taste. Billy Beer was a flop.  

Billy Beer was emblematic of American brewing at the time. It was all bad beer and gimmicky marketing. Coincidentally, it was Jimmy Carter who would change that. He signed a new tax law that kickstarted the craft beer revolution which brought us some of modern America's most popular brews. 

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Before 1450, books were written out by hand. It was slow and expensive. But Johannes Gutenberg borrowed a ton of money to create a printing press that could crank out Bibles and pamphlets and documents in huge numbers. Science, politics and philosophy were all up-ended. 

For example, the Catholic Church seized on the invention to sell special certificates absolving people of their sins - a move that made money, but caused a permanent schism in Christianity.   

And Gutenberg too found himself in trouble - when a financier sued the inventor to reclaim his loan, plus interest.  

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Jay Gould became hugely rich without ever really making a product or offering a service to benefit his customers. Other "Robber Barons" in the 19th century forged steel or pumped oil to make money - but Gould preferred to manipulate the stock market or bribe judges and politicians to generate a profit. 

Even when he was fired from the railway company he mismanaged, he used this inside information to profit from the soaring share price. No one liked Jay Gould - indeed many people physically assaulted him because of his awful behaviour - but his real legacy was the raft of laws America passed to try to prevent such a businessman ever rising to power again.   

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