Dan Bobkoff

In 2010, Panera launched several pay-what-you-want cafes. On today's show: We talk to Panera founder Ron Shaich about how this turned out.

There are so many mattress stores in America, and they always seem to be empty. So how can they afford the real estate? And how do they stay in business?

Tens of thousands of Russians and Ukrainians live in New York City, and many with close ties to their countries are on edge over what's happening back home.

We're used to rounding up the total on our taxi ride or dropping a buck or two in a jar at the coffee shop. Now, new high-tech ways to pay are nudging us to tip more generously and more often.

Cartooning was his passion as a kid, and he enrolled in the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts School of Architecture to become better at drawing backgrounds. Now, some call Ingels a "starchitect," because his challenging designs are getting built.

"There is an imbalance right now in e-commerce of supply and demand from a carrier standpoint, particularly in the days leading up to Christmas," says Sucharita Mulpuru, an analyst at Forrester Research. "There are not a lot of consequences to retailers when they push these orders to the carriers."

The New York City Council is slated to vote on a bill today that would add electronic cigarettes to the city's smoking ban. If the bill passes, use of e-cigarettes would be prohibited from public and private venues such as beaches, parks, restaurants and offices.

For freelancers and artists living in expensive cities like New York, the home-sharing site Airbnb has become a way to subsidize their rents. It's also often illegal. With the site's users in the crosshairs of New York's attorney general, and questions elsewhere, some now wonder if the good times are going to end.

New York City Mayor-Elect Bill deBlasio named William Bratton to head the city's police department Thursday. Bratton was New York's police commissioner in the 1990s, and was police chief in Los Angeles and commissioner in Boston. He'll return to the role as head of the nation's largest police department as the NYPD faces a crossroads. Despite unprecedentedly low crime rates in the city, the department has come under scrutiny in recent years for its controversial stop-and-frisk policy — tactics the mayor-elect has strongly criticized for souring relations between police and minority communities.

At least four people are dead after a Metro-North Railroad train derailed in New York on Sunday morning. This past summer, a freight train carrying trash derailed on the other side of the curve. And in May, two Metro-North trains collided in Connecticut, injuring more than 70 people.