Hello, Tim Halford here. Jack Bogle, the creator of the world's first index mutual fund,

has died at the age of 89. Ten trillion dollars are now invested in funds like the one he pioneered.

Loyal listeners to 50 things that made the modern economy may recall that we devoted an episode

to Jack Bogle and his invention, and this seemed like the right moment to repeat that episode.

One more thing, season two of 50 things is in production. From the Beehive to the Brick to the

blockchain, we'll have more stories of often underrated inventions and their unexpected consequences,

coming to the world's service and to this podcast feed at the end of March.

50 things that made the modern economy with Tim Halford.

Here's a question. What's the best financial investment in the world? If anyone knows the answer,

it's Warren Buffett. Buffett is the world's richest investor and one of the world's richest

people full stop. He's worth tens of billions of dollars accumulated over decades of savvy investments.

And Warren Buffett's advice? It's in a letter he wrote to his wife advising her how to invest

after he dies. And it's been published online for anyone to read. Those instructions pick the

most mediocre investment you can imagine. Put almost everything into a very low cost S&P 500 index

fund. Yes, an index fund. The idea of an index fund is to be mediocre by definition,

to passively track the market as a whole by buying a little of everything rather than trying to

beat the market with clever stockpicks. The kind of clever stockpicks that Warren Buffett himself

has been making for more than half a century. Index funds now seem completely natural,

part of the very language you're investing. But as recently as 1976, they didn't exist.

Before you can have an index fund, you need an index. In 1884, a financial journalist called Charles

Dow had the bright idea that he could take the price of some famous company stocks and average them,

then publish the average going up and down. He ended up founding not only the Dow Jones company,

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