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87 episodes
The Story of Money
by Financial Times · English
FT columnist Gillian Tett and FT Alphaville editor Robin Wigglesworth dig into the ideas, personalities and institutions that have shaped the history of finance. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Latest episodes
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A forgotten wallet and the surprising origin story of the credit card
How the credit card emerged from post–World War II consumer culture, starting with a “forgotten wallet” legend and culminating in Bank of America’s 1958 “Fresno drop,” a massive, fraud-prone rollout…
11 Nov 2026 · 45m · 22 chaptersFrance’s colonial battle to control African money
The episode explains how France used the CFA franc to maintain control over African money after colonial rule, focusing on its creation in 1945, the “France-Afrique” system, and the 1994 devaluation…
4 Nov 2026 · 42m · 35 chaptersCan economics help explain Europe’s deadly witch trials?
Whether economic hardship and shrinking food supplies helped drive Europe’s 16th–17th century witch trials, alongside religious competition and scapegoating.
28 Oct 2026 · 38m · 13 chaptersThe French Revolution's disastrous money experiment - Part 2
Part 2 of “The French Revolution’s disastrous money experiment” explains how the Revolution’s paper money experiment (assignats) interacted with political breakdown, the Reign of Terror, and the rise…
21 Oct 2026 · 46m · 20 chaptersThe French Revolution's disastrous money experiment - Part 1
Part 1 of “Why the French Revolution was a financial revolution” explains how France’s monetary and credit crisis—tied to political conflict—helped drive the Revolution.
14 Oct 2026 · 49m · 22 chaptersHow the US financed World War I using Charlie Chaplin and Girl Scouts
How the US financed World War I through the Liberty Loan Program, turning bond sales into a mass patriotic propaganda campaign that helped build the modern Treasury bond market.
7 Oct 2026 · 40m · 12 chaptersThe bloody birth of the bond market
The origin of the bond market, arguing bonds began in medieval Venice as a wartime, tradeable loan instrument (prestiti) that later improved transparency and accountability.
30 Sep 2026 · 43m · 17 chaptersDoes history show that fraud is the sign of a healthy economy?
Argues fraud is a “contrarian” sign of high-trust, complex economies, because trust enables efficiency and also creates opportunities for deception.
23 Sep 2026 · 46m · 19 chaptersMeet the Fuggers: Europe’s richest family ever
The episode traces how the 1500s Fugger family—especially Jakob Fugger “the Rich”—became Europe’s dominant financier by combining textile and mining wealth, meticulous bookkeeping, and political…
16 Sep 2026 · 44m · 20 chaptersWhy Dante put bankers in hell and James Joyce didn't
A live bonus episode of The Story of Money arguing that money is a “social technology” that shapes human civilization—either corrupting society (Dante) or liberating it (Joyce).
12 Sep 2026 · 41m · 13 chaptersHe expelled the money changers. So was Jesus anti-capitalist?
Whether Jesus was “anti-capitalist,” using the historical context of first-century Jerusalem’s temple economy, Roman rule, and Jesus’s teachings about money.
9 Sep 2026 · 52m · 18 chapters1873: The year America ditched silver as money and all hell broke loose
The “Crime of 1873” and how the US Coinage Act (Feb 1873) quietly removed the silver dollar from US coinage, effectively locking the country into a gold standard.
2 Sep 2026 · 41m · 13 chaptersThe ‘Sheriff of Wall Street’ who exposed bankers’ lies
The rise and fall of Eliot Spitzer, New York’s “Sheriff of Wall Street,” who used the Martin Act and email evidence to expose conflicts of interest in dot-com-era underwriting, then was brought down…
26 Aug 2026 · 46m · 16 chaptersMohammed: prophet, trader . . . and capitalist?
The episode argues that Prophet Muhammad’s early life as a merchant and his later leadership in Medina created “Hayekian” market conditions—risk-sharing finance, fair trading rules, and market…
19 Aug 2026 · 48m · 16 chaptersHow a stock market crash gave birth to modern antisemitism
How Germany and Austria’s 1871–1873 stock-market boom (the Grunderzeit) and the 1873 crash (Grunderkrack) helped generate modern antisemitism—shifting blame from religious prejudice to conspiracy…
12 Aug 2026 · 50m · 22 chaptersThe hidden financial world of ancient Rome
Ancient Rome’s “hidden” financial system—how ordinary people in Roman Egypt used markets, credit, ledgers, and complex family labor to survive precarity, high rents, taxes, and debt.
5 Aug 2026 · 54m · 19 chaptersThe canal that shaped American finance
How the 1817–1825 Erie Canal (363 miles) reshaped U.S. trade costs and helped create the modern U.S. municipal bond market.
29 Jul 2026 · 41m · 18 chaptersThe trader who made $100mn from the 1929 crash — only to lose it all
The life and trading philosophy of Jesse Livermore, from a Massachusetts farm boy to a legendary speculator who made about $100 million shorting the 1929 crash, then lost everything and died by…
22 Jul 2026 · 55m · 24 chaptersThe financial crash that created Britain’s first prime minister
The aftermath of the South Sea Bubble (1720–1721) and how Robert Walpole helped Britain stabilize its economy, reshape public finance, and become the effective first de facto prime minister.
15 Jul 2026 · 39m · 14 chaptersSouth Sea Bubble: the shoemaker’s son who sparked Britain’s first financial crisis
Britain’s South Sea Bubble (1720) and the first major international stock-market crash, reframed as a crisis of British government debt and a debt-for-equity swap that turned into stock “pumping.”
8 Jul 2026 · 52m · 16 chaptersThe 1980s Garfield buyout that changed corporate finance
How the 1980s leveraged buyout (LBO) wave—linked to “Gordon Gekko” ideology and even Garfield’s IP—created modern private equity, and why its value-creation story later drew backlash.
1 Jul 2026 · 55m · 25 chaptersThe US dollar’s ‘immigrant’ origins
The origins of the word “dollar” and the first “taler” coin, arguing the dollar’s dominance came from high-quality silver coins that spread through trade and copying rather than from U.S. sovereignty.
24 Jun 2026 · 48m · 22 chaptersThe financial scams that brought Albania to the brink of war
Albania’s post-communist financial collapse in the 1990s, when state banks were nonfunctional and unregulated deposit-taking “shadow” firms evolved into pyramid/Ponzi schemes, culminating in the 1996…
17 Jun 2026 · 50m · 23 chaptersWhen Nixon put America first and took the dollar off gold
The August 1971 “Nixon shock” that ended the US dollar’s gold convertibility, pressured allies to revalue currencies, and temporarily stabilized the Bretton Woods system—before it ultimately…
10 Jun 2026 · 41m · 16 chaptersWe use cookies.They keep VO running smoothly and help us improve it. Privacy policy