David McWilliams (on the history of money)

Summary

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Guest: David McWilliams
Episode: On the History of Money
Date: January 14, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this lively and illuminating episode, Dax Shepard and Monica Padman sit down with acclaimed Irish economist David McWilliams to explore the fascinating, messy, and transformative story of money. Together, they trace the history of our most powerful cultural invention—from ancient bartering to blockchain—taking detours through Greek democracy, Roman toilets, revolutions, and crypto controversies. The discussion is refreshingly candid; it covers the deep psychological, societal, and even emotional roles money plays in our lives, while busting myths and highlighting surprising truths with humor and humanity.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Taboo and Power of Money

• [00:19–03:35]
  • Dax and Monica reflect on money as a forbidden but ever-present topic.
  • Personal anecdotes about openness or secrecy around money.
  • Quote [02:13, Dax]: "My family was very open about money. And a lot of families are very tight lipped about money."
  • David McWilliams’ book, "The History of Money," is introduced, setting the stage.

Setting the Stage: David’s Background

• [06:00–11:13]
  • David shares about growing up in Dublin with a teacher mother and chemical plant worker father, debunking Irish stereotypes.
  • [10:04, Dax]: "Heavy drinker?"
    [10:05, McWilliams]: "On the contrary."
  • Discusses formative experiences: Irish economic hardships, emigration, and witnessing his father’s job loss shaping his interest in economics and power structures.

The Illusion of Control in Economics

• [17:19–19:42]
  • David’s realization from working inside the Central Bank of Ireland: “Nobody's in control.”
  • Quote [17:32, McWilliams]: “Once you work in these institutions ... the notion that there’s somebody in control disappears and you realize ... the stuff that I do is entirely random.”
  • Dax relates this to conspiracy theories, arguing true system-wide control is impossible.

Money as a Human Technology

• [21:29–24:44]
  • McWilliams frames money as our most important—and overlooked—technology, comparing it to fire.
  • [23:25, McWilliams]: “Fire makes stuff soft... if the first 300,000 years…was fire, the last 5,000 … we have become a Pluto fight species...constantly adapted by, and we adapt to, this technology [money].”
  • Money is the fifth element—an entirely human invention that binds diverse societies.

The Double-Edged Sword of Money

• [25:07–26:59]
  • Money can be seen as a corrupting or ennobling force.
  • [26:13, McWilliams]: “There was a French sociologist… Marcel Maus. He said, in order to trade, man must first throw down the spear. ... trading and money was an alternative to war.”

The Greeks: First Monetized Society

• [27:29–29:09]
  • The Greeks’ innovation with coinage led to rationality, democracy, and intellectual progress.
  • Urban public markets (agoras) create bustling centers for trade, gossip, and dissent versus centralized, non-democratic societies.

Money, Trust, and Social Complexity

• [32:31–34:02]
  • Money enables trust between strangers, amplifying social complexity.
  • Dax notes specialized labor and knowledge growth thanks to monetary systems.

Credit, Abstraction, and Time Travel

• [35:35–39:06]
  • The emergence of credit lets people “spend the profits of tomorrow today.”
  • [37:43, McWilliams]: “Money allows us to travel in time, and that’s a really essential thing to grasp.”

The Downside: Collapses, Revolutions, Manipulation

• [40:39–47:44]
  • The Roman and later European economies were built (and fell) on credit and the manipulation or destruction of currency.
  • When money systems fail, so do cultures: stagnation during the Dark Ages, innovation surges during the Renaissance along with the resurgence of coinage and double-entry bookkeeping.

Iconic Moments in Money’s Destructive Power

• [51:02–56:43]
  • David discusses how revolutions (American, French, Russian) are often underpinned by money and scarcity.
  • How Lenin and later Hitler used destruction of currency as a weapon to collapse systems.
  • Hitler’s (ultimately unrealized) plan to airdrop counterfeit British pounds over England is detailed.
  • [56:43, Dax]: “This is the real story. In 1941, Hitler…said what we’re going to do is … have the largest forgery operation ever ... airdrop them and destroy the spirit of the British people by destroying their money.”

Money Today: Crypto, Digital Currencies, and the Future

• [61:31–68:47]
  • Crypto as the modern attempt to challenge state-backed money.
  • McWilliams is highly critical:
    [65:15, McWilliams]: “Crypto is the Esperanto of money. Incredibly important to people who own Bitcoin… and the rest of us don’t give a shit.”
  • The real trust in money comes from collective faith, convenience, and state provision—not private, speculative creation.
  • The future is digital, but still likely state-backed: “At the end of the day, the Federal Reserve will issue digital dollars and that's it.” [68:34]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the Taboo of Money:
  • [00:34, Dax]: “It is really peculiar how powerful money is in our lives. And how it is a forbidden topic.”
• On the Power and Danger of Money:
  • [26:58, McWilliams]: “...what money is, is this amazing technology…that allows cooperation.”
• On Trust and Markets:
  • [32:47, McWilliams]: “Money amplifies trust, and trust is essential for us to live in complex societies... Once you start dealing with strangers, you start sleeping with strangers...”
• On Credit as Time Travel:
  • [37:41, McWilliams]: “Money allows us to travel in time.”
• On the Collapse of Currency:
  • [54:12, Dax]: “Lenin, after the 1917 Russian Revolution… said, how do we get rid of all remnants of the Russian government … we must completely annihilate the currency.”
• On Crypto:
  • [65:15, McWilliams]: “Crypto is the Esperanto of money. Incredibly important to people who own Bitcoin… and the rest of us don’t give a shit.”
  • [68:47, McWilliams]: “The idea that some private tech bro is going to be issuing the money... I get that you don’t trust the government. But the notion that you trust an individual even more is fucking preposterous.”

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Important Timestamps

• 00:19–03:35 — Money as taboo: Cultural anecdotes and openness
• 10:04–11:37 — David’s childhood, Irish economic challenges, shaping his worldview
• 17:19–19:42 — The myth of control in economics; conspiracy thinking debunked
• 21:29–24:44 — Money as the “fifth element”; comparison to fire
• 27:29–29:09 — Greeks and the intellectual consequences of monetization
• 35:35–39:06 — Credit, abstraction, and financial optimism
• 41:12–44:16 — Roman credit, taxation, and even urine as a taxed commodity!
• 47:44–50:58 — The Middle Ages decline and Renaissance resurgence: bookkeeping and zero
• 51:02–56:43 — Revolutionary manipulation of currency: American, Russian, German examples
• 61:31–68:47 — Crypto skepticism, state vs private money, the coming of digital currencies

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Tone & Style

The conversation is characterized by:

• Warmth and self-deprecating humor (Dax and Monica openly reflect on own anxieties about money)
• Storytelling flair (David relays complex history through vivid, relatable anecdotes)
• Intellectual accessibility—complex ideas are made inviting and engaging for any listener
• Openness to challenge and curiosity, with Dax asking “dumb” questions on behalf of all

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Summary for Non-Listeners

This episode is a highly engaging exploration of what money really is—its history, its psychological grip, its potential for both progress and devastation. Economist David McWilliams, with wit and storytelling panache, traces money’s rise from ancient times to its role in modern crises and digital disruption. Money is not only a tool for trade but a cultural force that shapes our relationships, values, and very sense of possibility. The episode entertains and educates, making the complex story of money feel both intimate and urgent.

If you’re curious about how money shapes everything—why it’s taboo, how it transformed civilizations, how it’s manipulated in war and revolution, and why crypto probably isn’t the new world order—this rich, story-filled conversation delivers.

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Transcript

[A]

Wondry plus subscribers can listen to Armchair Expert early and ad free right now. Join Wondry plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts, or you can listen for free wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert. Experts on Expert. I'm Dan Shepard and I'm joined by Lily Padman.

[B]

Hi.

[A]

Today we have an economist on. And this. I've been wanting to do this for a while, and I think it was maybe probably Malcolm who. Who planted the seed, which is Malcolm Gladwell said, it is really peculiar how powerful money is in our lives.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

And how it is a forbidden topic.

[B]

I know.

[A]

It's like, there isn't a more relevant force that we don't talk about.

[B]

I agree. It's at play and for everything, I.

[A]

Think, because we know intuitively it leads to envy. Yeah. So you just avoid it to avoid.

[B]

Envy or, like, bragging or something. Like, there are traps.

[A]

But, like, if you work with someone, they go, how much do you make? The issue is. Well, I'm afraid to say, because if I make more than them, we.

[C]

Of issues.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

And if I make less than them, now I have an issue with them.

[B]

I know somebody who. Who a few times has, like, been in a group and said how much money they've made on something.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

And I am like, I'm so allergic to you bristle. Yeah. And I guess I don't.

[A]

And this one shock you, but I've always pretty much been very open about it.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I remember Kate Hudson's brother Oliver.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Who I love and was really tight with for a while. I think the first time we ever met, we were sitting in the backyard of someone's palatial house and we're, like, looking at the city. It's just. It's pretty overwhelming with how gorgeous everything was. And this is 21 years ago. This is quite a place. He's like, yeah. And we both worked a bit as an actor. And I'm like, yeah. And then somehow I don't know how, but he was just like, yeah, how much do you have in the bank? And I'm like, oh, I have like $400,000. He goes, oh, my God. That's exactly what I have.

[C]

Oh, wow.

[A]

And I was so excited. And we like, yeah. There was something very bonding about it, too. But, like, yeah, I've always kind of been that way. I had to learn about. I always had less than everyone, so it didn't matter.

[B]

Exactly.

[A]

And my family was very open about money.

[B]

Oh. See?

[A]

And a lot of families are very tight lipped about money.

[B]

My parents would never. I would ask them, so how much money do you make?

[D]

Isn't that weird?

[B]

They would never tell me.

[A]

My mom's approach, which I. I agree with, was like, hey, they got. You got to learn how to manage all this and feed yourself. You better know what it. Like, I make this. The house is this. The groceries are this. Like, you need to understand.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And that is more logical to be including your kids. So they leave the house with a real sense of what it all is.

[B]

I mean, they were definitely instilling, like, you need to have enough. You need to be safe. Everything costs so much money all the time. Like, they were instilling fear. Fear around it. So then I would say, like, well, how much do you make? Like, if it's. Everything's so scary. And then they didn't want to say. That was not for us to ask.

[A]

I know. It's very, very common.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

What's. What you're already detecting, if you're listening still, is that we had a break and now we're so excited to be back together and chatting a lot. So this was an intro that kind of became a fact check. Alas, David McWilliams book is called the history of Money, and it's absolutely fascinating. It is. It is a force that really, you don't have the luxury of ignoring because it fuels revolution and despotic rulers, and you got to keep your eye on it.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

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[D]

Yeah, we really appreciate that because in our heads, America occupies a different place. Then you realize five hours, it's not a big deal.

[A]

Yeah, that's why the Vikings were able to get there.

[D]

Exactly. Whereas you bastards, like, you're fucking miles away.

[B]

Yeah, I know.

[A]

We're the real deal.

[D]

This is like going to a different civilization for us.

[B]

For a lot of Americans, LA is a different civilization.

[A]

Is it not maddening? If you're in the rest of the world going like, that place changes so radically every four years.

[D]

I mean, I can't believe you went Obama to Trump to Biden, back to Trump. And you're kind of sitting here in America thinking, this is a country I really don't understand. I think most Europeans look at it and think, we thought it was left, now it's right. We thought it was socialist. Now it's maga. Now you have mamdame in New York.

[B]

It's all.

[A]

Do you guys at least know, though that we don't either? I'm not kidding. That would comfort me that you guys understand we're as confused as you are.

[D]

That now is very reassuring because we're watching the news, particularly as an Irish person. We thought we knew the United States. I was a dishwasher here. I was a bartender, a student, came over to Boston, hung out with the Irish Americans. We kind of knew St. Patrick's Day. You guys came over there's what, 40 million Irish Americans. We thought, okay, we know this country.

[A]

You're more than 10% of the place. Yeah.

[D]

But now we have no idea.

[A]

But we don't either.

[B]

Yeah, we don't.

[D]

Well, that's reassuring.

[A]

And now, in our defense, I think we're getting a lot of the heat. But this is a global phenomenon. It is not unique to here. There has been a very huge rise of populism and authoritarian type leaders. So it's like, it's not unique here. But of course, unfortunately, we move the needle.

[D]

The most superpower.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Yes.

[D]

So, like, America's got 4% of the world's population and 24% of the world's income. So that's huge.

[A]

Yes. You got to take it serious.

[D]

When America sneezes, the rest of us catch a cold. Oh, no, seriously. Yeah, we catch fucking Covid. So you look at the States and you think, okay, do I have any sense of what's going on in that country? But you know what? You're right. Britain has got a reform party, which is probably going to win. France has got Le Pen, Italy's got Meloni, Germany's got the AfD, you know, so it's all going. You got Putin, but at least Putin has the decency not to get elected. He's not doing this democracy stuff at all.

[A]

Now, what I saw was great. It was on an English TV show, and they said it was when Biden came in. And the joke on the show was, yeah, this season of America's Boring, as if we're a TV show. So at least, I mean, you're entertained, are you not?

[D]

It's kind of like succession.

[A]

I hope you're having a laugh. I guess that's what I'm saying. Okay, so you grew up in Dublin and mom was an educator.

[C]

Yeah, she was a teacher.

[D]

Yeah, my mom was a teacher. She's still with us. She's 90. And I brought her to New York six weeks ago.

[B]

No way.

[D]

Extraordinary thing. So we're sitting at home, and she's from Cork in July, and we're chatting, chatting, chatting. And she goes, Scott, I'm 90 this year. I said, yeah, you are. And I said, what do you want to do? She says, you know what I'd really like to do? I'd love to go to New York. The last time she was in New York, think about this. She went on a boat.

[A]

Wow.

[D]

In the early 60s, we forget air travel is new. And it was really funny. She's 90. So it was myself, my wife, my two kids and granny, we go to New York, we're all jet lagged after the third day Granny says I'm going to go to bed for half an hour. Said fine, okay in the hotel. So myself, the kids and the Mrs. Are sitting having a drink. I thought she was gone for the night. Texts me by seven o'. Clock. What's the plan? Where are we going?

[A]

She was true to that Nap.

[D]

She did 11,000 steps on average every day.

[A]

Wow.

[D]

And she's 90. She'll be listening.

[A]

Okay, great.

[B]

Hello mom, Hello. Shout out to Alice.

[C]

Alice.

[A]

We got to bring her to LA now. Next. And her 95th.

[D]

No, it's a little bit too far.

[A]

It's too far now.

[D]

New York, you could do post up.

[A]

In New York for a few days and then. And then dad worked at a chemical plant.

[D]

My dad's passed away a long time. He worked in a chemical plant and a factory. You'd know it from Detroit. Blue collar, old school Irish, really decent guy. Passed away a long time ago, 2009. But yeah, he was a good skin.

[A]

Heavy drinker.

[D]

On the contrary.

[A]

What kind of working class guy was he?

[D]

So it's interesting, in Ireland you've got these weird things, right? You've got the boozy working class guys and then you've got these slightly teetotally, not so much conservative, but they were not boozers. My dad wasn't a boozer, my mum wasn't a boozer. It was unusual Irish upbringing. So there was no shouting and roaring, no fights, no slapping around.

[A]

Dad never came home with a black eye.

[D]

Yeah, yeah, none of that. It's funny, you know when you watch the Wire and you see McNulty and all the paddies and all the cop paddies and the fireman copies. Wasn't our family.

[A]

All to say, I'm not looking at that family and thinking well he'll certainly become an economist.

[D]

No, that's true, that's very true.

[A]

That's why I lay out both of them.

[D]

That's true. I shouldn't become a schoolteacher or something? Or a cop actually.

[A]

I would almost think you would seem greedy to even go into that line of work.

[D]

I went to school and in Ireland we have this very strange, very narrow education system which is highly academic and essentially what happens is you do these final exams, you get a certain amount of points, you have the same thing, the gmat and those points allocate you to certain courses in university. And the points I got allocated me to doing economics.

[A]

That prescriptive almost that prescriptive, right.

[D]

Doing Kind of business, e commerce y thing. And then I went into this course and thought, okay, fine, let's have a look at this. And I realized, wow, this is amazing. This gives you a framework to totally understand the world. And I was completely hooked when I went to university. No sense of it at all prior to this. I had no sense of economics. I had no sense of what it was about. Think about it. Born in Ireland, so the economy is a disaster from day one.

[C]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[D]

We have a banking crisis, we have fiscal crisis, we have currency crisis, everything. Half of the country lives here, emigrated, and we have a war going on. A little kid, you're a little ahead in the 70s, 80s, and you think, wow, the last thing you want to do is economics, because we can't do that. We can write, we can talk, we can sing, we can dance, you can.

[A]

Join U2, maybe he can join you too, maybe.

[D]

All that sort of stuff. Yeah, the one success we have is bot one successful. And everyone's looking at this guy saying, how did you do it? Anyway, the point is, I went to university, old university in Dublin, Trinity College, where I now teach, which is kind of a bizarre symmetry. And I thought, wow, we might not be able to understand Ireland because we're a particularly weird bunch, but we could maybe understand America, maybe the globe. I think what happens if you're lucky as a late teenager, something happens in your life where you think, okay, I like this stuff. Then you just do it, right? Then you do the masters, you do, you know, all that sort of carry on. And the reason I did a master's was because there was no jobs in Ireland, right? So I did masters in Belgium. Nobody emigrates to Belgium except for me.

[A]

So then you found yourself at the Central bank of Ireland from 90 to 93, and some pretty dramatic shit went down in those few years, right? You have the German reunification, so they're going to have to combine a currency and absorb this half of themselves that has nothing. You had Black Wednesday. Is that what it.

[D]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The Stirling thing.

[A]

And then you had the eu, the treaty, Maastricht.

[D]

Yeah. And I had no idea. And like, none of us have any idea that there was going to be, as you said, German unification, which totally transformed Europe. Then you have the General Maastricht Treaty, which totally transforms Europe. And then the Brits did what they always do, which is they screw up.

[A]

They screwed up massively, like a true Irishman.

[D]

No, but they screwed up massively. They screwed up massively. And so when their currency collapsed Our currency collapsed with it. So you're a kid, but this is your first job. And what is interesting about working central banks, like working for the Fed, here you begin to understand how the system works and doesn't work.

[A]

Is it fair to say you're learning about the levers that can be pulled and how effective they are in different situations? And you're kind of learning about the mechanisms by which the state can kind of try to help or attempt.

[D]

Does try to help. It's very easy to sit in the sidelines and say, you know, the state is this and it's that. But actually when you work in the system, you realize that most of the people are actually trying to help. Yes, most of the people are trying to do the right thing. So for example, I was born in the poorest country in the western world.

[A]

That can't be true.

[D]

So you're the poorest of the rich. Ireland was the poorest country.

[A]

You're saying Eastern Europe's not communist? No.

[D]

So Eastern Europe is a communist. Right. So when you're born in the poorest country of the rich world, it's maybe the most deleterious place to be because you're always comparing yourself to your neighbors.

[A]

You can only up compare, really.

[D]

Yeah, your neighbors are rich. So when I was a kid, I worked in Boston. I worked as a dishwasher. We used to arrive over with degrees in mathematics and economics and all the jobs you could get were washing dishes here in America. I remember working when I was 18 in Boston, washing dishes and thinking to myself, okay, these Americans who we are serving are much richer than us, but they're not that smarter than us, they're not that better read, they're not clever. What are they doing that makes them so. What are we doing that makes us so backward?

[A]

Right, yeah.

[D]

And that was something that always prompted me in the world of economics. The other issues. My dad, who you mentioned lost his job when I was about 12 and we lived in a pretty middle class area and that wasn't really supposed to happen. So I remember my dad, when I was looking out the window in the morning, he put on a shirt and tie and pretended to go to work. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's classic, you know, because of who we were, you know, And I remember as a kid, this really weighed on me and I thought, how can this man who was so decent be made redundant by somebody else? Like, what is this world? How does it all work? How is it so much that he feels so ashamed and embarrassed that he's letting on to our neighbors that he's going to work. But everybody knew he was.

[B]

It's also for him.

[D]

It was for him. So you asked me about working for the institutions and working in economics. That had a profound effect to make.

[A]

You didn't want to be powerless.

[D]

Precisely. How can a man who's decent, honest, get screwed by the system? So what is the system that's screwing him so I can get fucked by it?

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[D]

Maybe that was a sort of a propulsion mechanism that I only realize as I get older. But to come back to it, I think the people in the institutions of state are trying to do the right thing. However, they will never experience what my dad experienced. And the reason they won't is because they're in the big public sector so they can hide, they're not going to get screwed. Nobody's going to knock on the door and say, you're gone. And I remember also he worked in this pharmaceutical factory, which is a big kind of chemical factory. And I worked there for a summer when I was 15. And I remember thinking to myself, fuck, this is hard work. This is proper work. This is actually back breaking work.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. Where you're in pain after work.

[D]

I was carrying crates and crates of chemicals. I was like 16, so as strong as I was ever going to be. This guy at 50 doing this, guys at 40, guys at maybe close to 60, and they're bent over and they're broken and they're working for the industrial wage. I remember seeing this thinking to myself, okay, that's hard work. Now you don't want to be doing that. So maybe not an obvious economist. There was a certain amount of triggers. I said, maybe economics is more interesting.

[A]

Yeah. So these three events that you oversaw and I imagine in some capacity, got to weigh in on as much as the Central bank of Ireland would have been involved in any of them. How did those three events shape your overarching philosophy on economics?

[D]

Working inside the great institutions of state, the European Union, the Irish government, My only lesson was that nobody's in control. And that's a very strange thing to arrive that conclusion at the age of about 25.

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[D]

Because most of us watch the telly, you see Jay Powell coming on tv, the head of the Fed, you think, okay, he's in control. He knows what's going on. And once you work in these institutions, that slightly ephemeral would incredibly satisfying notion that there's somebody in control disappears and you realize that the world, the economy, the stuff that I do is entirely random.

[A]

Can we drill for one second down. And then, because I just was in a debate with my brother while he was in town, and my brother leans more into conspiracy theories than certainly I do. And we're chatting in the car and I said, david, my thing that I got to push back on a little bit is I've been lucky enough to know a lot of these people that you think are at the head of these conspiracies. I'm like, no one really has as much control as you think. No one can pull the strings the way not one person, not one entity, not even a collective of 20 people can. It's way too random and dynamic and there's too many players. And the notion that this person's in control of that, it's quite an illusion. That's just not how he.

[D]

And what did he say to you?

[A]

I don't think I sold him on it, no.

[D]

But it's true. So I've always thought that economics is much closer to biology than physics.

[A]

Sure.

[D]

So biology is messy. Evolution is messy. The notion that humanity is an animal who's arrived at the top of this evolutionary chain, it's a mess, it's unpredictable, and you don't know what's going to happen tomorrow, let alone next year. Economics became captured by, intrigued by, infatuated by physics about 50 or 60 years ago. And the reason I think this is what happened, this is to go back to your story, conspiracies, is that economists always wanted to be clever. And in the 19th century, the clever science was biology. So Pasteur and Darwin and evolution. In the 20th century, the clever science was physics. So Einstein, he was a global superstar. And economists said, oh, why don't we be clever like those guys? So they introduce all these mathematics into economics, thinking that the world is predictable. Yeah.

[A]

It has the illusion.

[D]

So to come back to your brother. So the idea is, is it possible that one person and one Illuminati run the world? No, because the world is beautifully chaotic.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[D]

Because we are beautifully chaotic and unpredictable. One of the joys of doing economics is to realize that at the core of this economics idea is this crazy thing called the human being.

[A]

What's interesting is, yes, to your point, the biologists were kings, and then the physicists were kings. But there has been this really interesting thing I've seen in the social sciences, which more and more psychologists borrow from economics. All these models of benefit and loss and these games you play, right, they're all kind of game theory. They're adjacent to economics and they're using kind of the mathematical equations to help us get to, of all things, psychological phenomena, it's moving in that direction.

[D]

And psychology as we know it's impossible to study the collective human which economics is about without psychology. And particularly group psychology. Maybe not individual psychology.

[A]

Well, they call it behavioral economists now.

[D]

And it's becoming very vogue at the moment. It's persuasive too, I think all sciences pursuits, academia, Once it starts to borrow from everywhere else, it's becoming much more interesting.

[A]

Agreed.

[D]

So I think that economics should be seen, bizarrely, in that field as a form of intellectual communication about the world.

[A]

Okay. So your book, the history of money immediately appeals to me. I of the opinion that we have this enormous force in all of our lives that everyone is completely uncomfortable to. I share this opinion with Malcolm Gladwell. He and I will lament often when he's on here. It's just like, how bizarre is it that it's the most powerful force in our life and it's almost the most taboo topic to ever approach. Your book is great in so many ways because we're gonna go through, how do we even get here? And I think we should start with how we got here. We should start with the previous most powerful invention of ours, which is fire.

[D]

So I spent 30 years as a monetary economist, professional in private sector, public. And one thing that really struck me after all this was that economists didn't really understand money. So economists, my tribe, took it upon ourselves to explain money to the world. And I remember watching this, I said, do they really get it? The first thing I was always intrigued is I'd never met a rich economist, which was kind of interesting. They talk about money all the time, but they're not good with it.

[A]

It's like clairvoyance. You don't play the lottery. Well, why aren't we playing the lottery?

[D]

Exactly. Exactly. Okay. So I thought that that was the first thing I was like, well, that was unusual. The second thing is I thought, what does money do to us? It's sexy, it's mendacious, it's dangerous, it's transgressive. It turns us into strange creatures. Like, this is a mad force, creates envy and jealousy creates envy and resentment. So it creates love and great stuff and imagination. And we're animated. It creates great innovation. I thought to myself, there has to be another way of looking at this. I mean, I've been thinking about this for about 20 years, but I was sitting during COVID in the basement. We had a serious lockdown. And so you're kind of stuck And I thought actually what money is, is this amazing technology that humans invented. We have been a species that has always been defined by mastering technologies, solving problems, figuring shit out. And so if you read anthropology, you realize that our big technology prior to money was fire. So we were the species that figured out how to make it, how to keep it, how to use it. And fire has changed us physically. Makes our jaws smaller, makes our stomachs smaller, our teeth. Look at the three of us. We are the evolutionary products of fire.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

There will be a lot of people that are anti meat eating that'll go like, well, if you look at our mouths, we don't have the teeth of a carnivore or a proper omnivore. And it's like, yeah, because they didn't have fire and we did.

[D]

And we could chew.

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[D]

And fire makes stuff soft.

[A]

Soft inedible.

[D]

Exactly. So that intrigued me, this idea that if the first 300,000 years of our existence as humans was characterized by the relationship between fire and us, this clever ape, which is what we are in effect, and that changed us. So we were a pyrophyte species adapting to and adapted by fire. If you look at the last 5,000 years, and particularly now, we have become, and I made this word up so for the. We've become a Pluto fight species. So Pluto being money in Greek and wealth. So we are a species that has been constantly adapted by, and we adapt to this technology. But the fascinating thing about money is unlike fire, so when the Greeks thought about the world, they had the four elements, the earth, wind, fire and water. I think money is the fifth element. It is a human invented element that only exists in our mind. We can't understand ourselves without understanding money. You can't understand the modern world. I'm in la. I came from Dublin. I'm in a hotel down the road. You guys are doing a podcast. Rob is from Chicago. What is the technology that binds us all together? It's actually money.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[D]

And so you can't understand there's 7 billion people on the world. There's no way in the world you can understand us without understanding our relationship with this technology.

[A]

You make a great point. The rickshaw driver in Old Delhi, the one thing that assuredly he understands in the same way as the trust fund kid from New York, is they both understand money. That's maybe the most unifying thing.

[B]

Can we add love to that? That's not a technology, but that's also a universal element. If we're adding it.

[D]

Well, love is the thing that gets us out of bed in the morning. Love is the thing that keeps us together. But love is even more ephemeral than money as a force.

[A]

And it can't meet any of our survival needs other than what it creates, which is a bond where you can create more of us.

[D]

It's the most beautiful thing we.

[B]

I don't think we can live without it.

[D]

No, we can't.

[A]

Yeah, I would die.

[D]

You meet loveless people and you know it. Yeah, yeah, you can sense it.

[A]

What's exciting for me to talk with you currently about this is we know all of the pejoratives about money, right? It is the root of all evil. It is what makes everyone envious and jealous and all these things. And I think there are increasingly people in this country, which I think is only a gift of being in such a rich fucking country, is that people want to do away with it. Like, they really have this naive sense that it's evil. We need to do away with it. They really need to understand what a tool it's been for us. Probably everything they love about life will find its way down and be distilled into money. Created it in some way. So let's start in Mesopotamia.

[D]

Well, just on that point, I was educated by Catholic priests, and they came in and they said, money is the root of all evil. And I thought, well, that sounds okay. I accept that. That sounds cool. But then when you think about it, there was a French sociologist called Marcel Maus, and he said something very interesting from the 19th century. He said, in order to trade, man must first throw down the spear. And what he meant was that trading and money was an alternative to war. Cause in the old days, if I wanted what you had or you had, I had to kill you for it.

[B]

Yeah, take it.

[D]

Monica, you say, well, actually, David, why don't we use this thing called dollars? And you give me a hundred dollars and I'll give you. And suddenly you have this technology that allows cooperation.

[A]

Yeah, peace.

[D]

So going back to Mesopotamia, what is absolutely fascinating for me was that civilizations that adopted money, particularly the Lydians and then the Greeks, they seemed to acquire a competitive advantage over other civilizations. And I thought, why was that? Like, so, for example, how did the Greeks, a tiny little civilization, fight off the Persians, which is a massive empire, for so long? Why did the Greeks break the intellectual ceiling? Why did they come up with rationality? Why did they come up with democracy?

[A]

Because they're not genetically smarter or superior. We need a much different explanation.

[D]

I think what was actually going on was Greeks were the first monetized society. And the interesting thing about money is that if you start with a monetized society, then you have to count, then you have to be precise. Then suddenly if you're being precise, then you're being rational, you're being logical. So I was always intrigued by why the Greeks moved from myths to logic in about 300 years. Because it's not a long time.

[A]

Right? Right.

[D]

I argue in the book that one of the reasons they did this is they were the first monetized society. And a monetized society requires precision. And precision requires you to be logical. And logical requires you to be rational, and rational requires you to question. The Greeks were the ones that came up with money and coins and coinage. And then the thing about coins, it makes money real. It puts it in your pocket. It's a day to day thing. You're starting to be commercial. But I was always intrigued about the Greeks was that they. At the center of the Greek cities wasn't some big palace or some big wide street for soldiers to go down was the market. They put the agora in the center of their society. And once you put the market in the center of your society, everybody can come, trading, spoofing, talking, all that sort of stuff. Moscow could never have been created by a democracy. Have you been there? Every street in Moscow is huge for parades, for parades, for parades, for guys walking down with guns and machine guns.

[A]

And shit like that.

[D]

Right. Whereas you go to an old Greek town, tiggledy, piggledy markets, the whole thing.

[A]

Well, David, I did go in 95 to St. Petersburg, and driving around the morning, I'm like, where would anyone gather? There's no cafes, there's no supermarkets. All the things that we take for granted, we underestimate that they're also the place that you gather and be social and meet your neighbors. There's nothing to congregate around here.

[D]

And when you gather and you're social, you grumble, you get pissed off, you.

[A]

Gossip, all the good stuff, you challenge. And I gotta like the big guy. Okay, so yeah, it's by design.

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

Stay tuned for more armchair expert if you dare. We are supported by Allstate. Checking Allstate first could save you hundreds on car insurance. That's smart. Not checking the pockets of your jeans before doing laundry. Classic oversight. That mystery clunking in the dryer. Yeah, that was your lip balm's final moments. And somehow there's always one random receipt in there to dissolve into confetti. Yeah, checking first is smart. So check Allstate first for a quote that could save you hundreds of. You're in good hands with Allstate. Potential savings vary, subject to terms, conditions and availability. Allstate North America Insurance Company affiliates, Northbrook, Illinois. We are supported by Inuit TurboTax. You know that feeling when you drop your taxes off with somebody and then nothing. You're just sitting there wondering if they've even started if there's a problem. If you're getting everything you're owed, it's like sending your car to the shop and never getting an update. That's what I appreciate about TurboTax full service. They've completely flipped that experience. You get matched with a dedicated tax expert who actually does your taxes for you. And here's the part that changes everything. You get real time updates on your expert's progress right in the app. You can literally see when they're working on your return. No more guessing, no more waiting by the phone. And if you have questions, you get unlimited help from your expert at no extra cost. Even nights and weekends during tax season, they're focused on getting you the best possible outcome and every dollar you deserve. Visit TurboTax to get matched with a Turbo tax Full service expert today. That's TurboTax.com only available with TurboTax full service experts real time updates in iOS mobile app.

[D]

So if you look at these civilizations and people say, well, why did they propel themselves forward so much? Lots of ideas been thrown around. I think one of the basic ideas. And so they were monetized. And the monetary mind changes the world.

[A]

In anthro, you spent a lot of time on this, which is once we moved to an agrarian or farming subsistence mode, you had surplus, which was a new thing. We had never had surplus. We had storage of food. So all of this facilitated specialized labor. Now you could have a cobbler who only did shoes. He didn't have to have an occupation that fed himself. He now could have an occupation where he become a specialist. And now he's going to learn everything there is to know about it in a way that someone would never have had the bandwidth to do. And then I'm presuming through monetization that would have been all done with trading. And now you have calligraphers, you have writers, you have all these people that are dedicated to something other than feeding themselves. So knowledge is exploding. But still the trading system is very inefficient versus a monetary system to handle the trading.

[D]

So the monetary system is the elixir of the trading system. It what kind of hypercharges, the trading system. And it's an amazing intellectual leap in economics. They call it the law of one price, but I don't think that really captures what it is. But the idea that the three of us could align upon a notion of value. So you want this. You want this. I want this. And rather than discuss it and convince each other that we're wrong, we say, okay, here's a piece of coinage that settles the discussion. So if you think about societies, what is so essential for our urban societies to work is trust. You go to a cafe, you turn up, say, could I have a flat white? The keyser says, yeah, fine. He knows nothing about you, Monica. Doesn't know your track record, doesn't know who you are, doesn't know where you're from. But because of the dollar, that's sufficient trust between the pair of you to trade. And so you click on your phone and it's done. Money amplifies trust, and trust is essential for us to live in complex societies because we have to trust each other. So what you're seeing is the introduction of money had this incredibly constructive way of all humans, strangers dealing with each other. And once you start dealing with strangers, you start sleeping with strangers, you start hanging out with strangers, you start mixing with them. You've got exposed families, and you're into the world that we begin to understand as the urban society that we all come from. From.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

Don't you think there's an argument for. It engages distrust. Because if you're making the price, if I'm trying to buy something from you, and you're like, it's $10. And I'm like, but it's not. Dax is having this happen right now with the Christmas lights situation.

[D]

What's happening? What's happening? What's happening?

[A]

I got a bid to install Christmas.

[B]

Lights, and it's so much money. And he's like, it's not that much. It cannot be that much money to.

[D]

Do this, to install a few lights.

[B]

Right? And so he's like, I don't trust you because you've dec to up the charge, maybe because you know it's me and I have money or whatnot. So I feel like money fuels a distrust.

[D]

Think about this in another way, Monica. I agree with you, but the price sets the signal to you. I don't trust you. So in the price is all this information. Can you imagine the guy, whoever is installing, let's say the Christmas guy. Yeah, Christmas lights guy.

[B]

Okay, Santa Claus.

[D]

Santa Claus, Right. So you're Thinking, okay, I don't really trust you. But actually, what triggers your lack of trust is the price. And in the price is all this information in one number. This is where economics is fascinating. So in one number, Monica says, shit, nah, I'm not having that. Then you begin the process of the negotiation. And then you will arrive at this conclusion of whether it's right or wrong. But my point is, it's money expressed in a number, which is the price that triggers whether or not you trust somebody. And that's a fascinating thing. Yeah, it is, because it's such an amazing shorthand for everything.

[A]

Let's talk, though, a little bit about mustard. Take me. Because once we have a monetary system, we get immediately some very abstract things built on top of it, which would be credit. The first person in human history to be written about is a guy borrowing, essentially, barley to brew beer.

[D]

So he's a guy called Kushim. So it's the first name we know has been written down, was a dude called Kushim in the history of the world. And the reason his name. So you would think as some great God or some great storyteller, a hero from town. No, he was a homebrew hustler. Could easily be from here in la. Okay. A guy doing his thing, and you think, okay, what was he doing? And then you realize that he was borrowing money from somebody else in order to make beer to pay that dude back in a year's time.

[A]

Two and a half years.

[D]

Two and a half years. The rate of interest was 33%.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah, that's pretty.

[C]

Wow.

[A]

It seems steep to us now, but again, tiny window of time, though.

[D]

Tiny window of time. And that's what I found fascinating about doing this. I can now feel what Cushim, this guy, felt at night waiting for the harvest. So he needed a good harvest so he could get cheap cereal to pay back the dude. And then you realize money makes the ancient really modern. Because, you know, if we look back at ancient history, like old Irish history, there'd be knights and big chieftains. It's not real for us. Whereas Cushim, you can see the dude, he's got a mortgage to pay. He's like, shit, I don't have money. I've got these guys paying at the taxman on my back. And that's what I found fascinating.

[A]

But it introduces this concept, which I love how you articulated it, which is credit is being able to spend the profits of tomorrow, today. Yeah. Which is a fascinating. Again, this is such an abstraction, and this is such A paradigm shift. And this opens us up to kind of a unimaginable world of potential because you can spend the money, the profits of tomorrow, today.

[B]

The potential profits, yes.

[D]

It's an amazing thing, right?

[A]

And we kind of can't grow without that.

[D]

Money allows us to travel in time, and that's a really essential thing to grasp.

[A]

Think how cool that is.

[D]

So, for example, people listening to the podcast will have a mortgage. They go to the bank, they buy a house. Mortgage, in effect, is painting a picture of who you're going to be in 30 years time. And everybody believes this. And the rate of interest is the price at which we decide is the risk. It's an amazing idea. And you're traveling in time all the time with finance, as you said, you're borrowing from tomorrow, from an unimagined tomorrow and in unpredictable tomorrow, for reality today. And that's why credit and interest rates are so much more fascinating than economists talk about. Because what you're actually doing is you're traveling in time. You're projecting into the future. The three of us have no idea what's going to happen in an hour's time. So we're painting a picture of the person we're going to be over the next 30 years.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And that opens up the world. It's massive. It's mass of possibility.

[D]

In the book I call money magic, because it is like magic. And what's more magical is we all suspend our critical faculties to imagine a future with money. And that I find not just fascinating, I find it really electrifying.

[A]

Minimally, it's very optimistic, saying, I believe it's going to work out in the end to the degree that I'll take this risk.

[D]

But this is the thing. All of us humans are programmed to be optimistic, which is why pessimists are so unusual.

[A]

Well, that's when you have depression, when you think the world will be worse.

[D]

Why do you get out of bed in the morning? You get out of bed in the morning because in some little part of your head, you think tomorrow or today is going to be better than yesterday. It's what doctors call your biological arrogance, which is that we are going to be better today than we were yesterday. And we know biological arrogance is ridiculous notion because we're all going to die.

[B]

Yeah, we're all getting closer to the other one.

[D]

We should be biologically pessimistic, but we're not. And that is a beautiful elemental part of humanity. And I think money, to the extent that it is this amazing Technology animates that.

[A]

That's why I can't believe we don't talk about it more. It is this incredible power, and it's not without its warts. But I do think people, without the awareness of how much it's given us, and you're only aware of the warts, which. Those are very visible. You could really throw the baby out with the bath water. And I would urge people to really understand the relevance in our life and our culture and our expansion and why it's so emotional.

[D]

Money is complex. We are complex because money is all about humanity. And we're weird, we're odd, and we're different, and our brains are weird. And therefore money's unusual.

[A]

Yeah. So it gives us writing, it gives us this new paradigm of again, spending tomorrow's earnings today, which allows for growth and investment and hope, and it allows for trust. Okay, so you give us the Greeks, right? And they become probably the best sales pitch for money. What then did the Romans. You say the Roman Empire was built on credit. How did they take what the Greeks did and then expand it?

[D]

For example, if you watch a movie like Gladiator, you know, you think the Romans, it's all about killing Christians or killing animals or fighting big armies, all that stuff. Big muscular guys, beefy guys, buffed up guys walking around with shields. And then you realize, okay, but what was actually fueling this whole thing? What were they doing it for? What were the Romans conquering Syria for? What were the Romans conquering North Africa? Why did the Romans go to Britain? They were looking for resources. Now why were they looking for resources? Because it was an empire built on credit.

[A]

Tomorrow had to be more profitable than today.

[D]

Exactly, exactly. So they have this great expression called pecunia non olet, which means money does not smell. And so the Romans had this, and it comes from Vespasian, the emperor, because they actually used to tax piss urine.

[B]

Oh, what?

[D]

Because in urine is ammonia. They use it to clean their teeth.

[B]

Oh, wow.

[D]

So you think now. So you think about it. Okay, so you guys have American teeth. I have European teeth. American teeth are whiter. Okay? We don't do that shit. Okay, so you guys have American teeth.

[A]

Austin Powers did a good job at that.

[D]

No, but it's just a thing. Europeans don't whiten our teeth. It's a general rule. Right, but Americans do. Now why do you do that? Because you want to look younger. You look better. It's more beautiful.

[A]

It looks cleaner.

[D]

It looks cleaner.

[B]

Yeah.

[D]

I think it's that when I see American teeth, I Think they are cleaner than this.

[A]

Okay, they're vainer, but they also are cleaner.

[D]

I have a mouthful of those. Okay, so you think the Romans thought the same thing. And also, clean teeth are a symbol of youth because kids have white teeth. And so they understood that in order to make their togas whiter, to clean their togas and their teeth, they needed this chemical, so it became valuable. So they used to have these big latrines. I know this podcast is going in a strange place, but here we go. We like latrines full of piss, which the Romans collected. And then they thought, okay, if piss is valuable, then we should tax piss. So there was a piss tax agent, right? That was his job or her job. And fascinatingly so, the Colosseum was built by a guy called Vespasian, and Vespasian was a Roman emperor around seven. And so, of course, you're building the Colosseum, so you're spending money. So what he had to do, when you're spending money, you got to tax broadly. So he thought, let's tax piss as well as everything else. Now, his son called Titus, who subsequently became an emperor, was one of these sort of aristocratic sort of guys. Titus said to his dad, Vespasian, he said, look, man, we're the Roman Empire. We can't be doing something as derogatory, degrading as taxing pisses. And Vespasian responded, pecunia non o let. Money does not smell. And what he meant by that is, people don't care where it comes from, as long as it works. He was slapping down his son, saying, don't you be too uppity. But on the other hand, he was saying, this is an amazing concept. And so the Romans, you see, were this amazing empire of credit. The Romans, like the Greeks, had something very bizarre, as they couldn't feed themselves, so the empire was too big. They didn't have enough agriculture, so they had to persuade other people, and they persuaded other people through military occupation and credit. So what you see is all the credit cycles, like, so, for example, 2008, what happened here in America, when the property market goes up and everyone's doing these things? The same thing happened, believe it or not, in AD 33, under a different emperor. So what you see is the Romans were like us. It's speculated. They bought and sold.

[A]

They spent tomorrow's money today, and sometimes tomorrow's money wasn't there.

[D]

They had banking crisis, they had their Lehman Brothers moment. That's what intrigued me about writing the book. You realize this is just the story of Us.

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

And we never learn.

[A]

Yeah. So with the obvious success of money up to that point, why, when we enter the Middle Ages, do we see money go away? What happened?

[B]

Why?

[D]

Well, in Western Europe it disappeared. The fascinating thing is if you look at, for example, Indian or East Asian culture, money existed there all the time. The fascinating thing with the Romans, they traded with Indians, but the Indians didn't want anything that the Romans made because it was all second grade. So the Indians acquired gold from the Romans because they said, you know what, we don't want your.

[A]

Indians have always loved that gold.

[B]

Right.

[D]

We don't want your shitty stuff. Even today Indians hoard gold.

[A]

Oh yeah, they love gold.

[C]

Culturally big.

[D]

So Pliny the Elder even noticed and remarked that all the Roman gold that they were getting from the Roman gold mines in Iberia, but also they were robbing for everybody else, ended up in India. So what you see after the end of the Roman Empire, one of the things never really focused on at the end of the Roman Empire was the Roman Empire ended around the same time as hyperinflation set in in Rome. So I think, think one of the reasons the Roman Empire collapsed was that the monetary system broke down. And once the monetary system breaks down, you break down the whole gel of.

[A]

Society which we'll get to. We see this pattern emerge in Germany, we see it emerge in Russia.

[D]

It's a well worn trope. Not even a trope, it's a phenomena. But when you with money, you with people's heads. That's why inflation's so dangerous.

[A]

Yeah, right, yeah. Governments collapse, just the threat of it.

[B]

Even if it's not there.

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[D]

It's an incredibly elemental force in our world. So one of the interesting thing about the Dark Ages for me, looking at the history of money, was money disappears, coinage disappears, people stop inventing, innovating. And money, we also stop innovating in art, culture, in literature, in architecture, all these things that are expressions of human dynamism. We went backwards in Western Europe, in Eastern Europe, in the Ottoman Empire, by the Byzantine Empire, and further east we didn't. But in Western European civilization we really went backwards. Now, is there a link between the elimination of money and the elimination of culture? I think yes. Money is the gelling agent of civilized.

[A]

Urban societies, an uptick in oppression and subjugation because you have now the feudal system takes the place of this monetary system. Right.

[D]

So I mean, the last thing you want to be is a peasant born in 8th century Western Europe.

[A]

You're an indentured slave, you're never getting out of that. You can't buy your piece of property. There's no means to do that.

[D]

Precisely. I mean, the promise of money today and then. And the reason people want it is that with money, you can change and alter your material situation. You can go from being poor to being rich, and that's what people want.

[A]

Without that, it's just hereditary. And you can't break out of those shackles.

[D]

So imagine when money disappears, that hereditary brace or straight jacket becomes even more tight. And then what you see is that when money begins to re. Emerge from Germany in the 10th century, you begin the process which leads inevitably to the Renaissance, to the Reformation, to European civilization, guilds, philosophy, all that good stuff.

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[D]

Without money, you don't have it.

[A]

Our next resurgence is the Renaissance and you're in Florence. And they have now the very famous coin, the Florence. Tell us how that money created the greatest explosion of art, of literature.

[D]

It's a fascinating story which begins in India and is located in the island of Sicily in the Mediterranean. And in the Mediterranean, in Sicily, when the Arab faith, Islamic faith, literally burst out of Saudi Arabia, if you think about it, they conquered all of North Africa and Persia and into India. And what the Arabs were doing, like all conquerors, they were taking good bits of everything. And the bit they took from India, which is fascinating, is they took the concept of zero, the number zero, which Europeans, Greek philosophy, which is where our philosophical hinterland is, was obsessed by proving things. And if you're obsessed by proving things, there's one thing you really, really dislike is nothing, the void. And zero is the void. So Greek philosophy closed down notions of the void. Indian philosophy, on the other hand, embraced nothingness. Embrace the void, and therefore Indian mathematicians embrace zero. And they exported that to Persia. And the Arabs thought, shit, this is really interesting. So algebra is a Arabic word. You can't have algebra without zero. So they brought this. And the reason they brought it to Sicily is that Sicily was this extraordinarily cosmopolitan anthropo in the 11th century, where Arabs, Jews, Christians, Byzantines all lived together. Unusual in Europe. And there a young man who's now known as Fibonacci, who's the father of mathematics, was the son of a Genovese tax collector. And he went to school in Sicily and he learned from the Arab traders mathematics, algebra, zero. He brought that to Florence with him. And that created. I know it sounds weird, as accountants tend to be diminished as not particularly interested.

[A]

Creative.

[C]

Yeah.

[D]

But it was accountants that brought this amazing thing called double entry bookkeeping. Into Europe. And this allowed European traders to begin to figure out sets of accounts. And this is the elixir of commerce, because commerce needs a technology. So imagine zero and double entry entry bookkeeping is the software.

[A]

How does double entry bookkeeping work? Can you tell me in seconds?

[D]

Yeah. Very simple. Debits, credits.

[A]

So like a P and L sheet?

[D]

Yeah. You take your P and L, the podcast, how much we cost, how much money we're raising, how much of the advertising.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

What's our net?

[D]

And then every week you can say, are we up or down relative to the next guy, the competition?

[A]

It's kind of hard to imagine that wouldn't be obvious. It didn't always exist.

[D]

It didn't always exist.

[B]

You take it for granted someone invented that.

[D]

Somebody invented it, yes. It's not a natural way to look at the world. We think it's natural now.

[A]

It's so baked in.

[D]

But it came from somewhere, and it came from the Indians who gave it to the Arabs, who gave it to the Europeans, and then the Europeans doubled down on it. So that's what I find fascinating. So in a way, the book is about all these kind of odd things that you think that's important.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

With our remaining time, I would love to talk about the.

[D]

Sorry. Because we are going on. We're going on.

[A]

No, it's so fun. But I do want to make sure we get to the destructive power that it holds. And let's talk about revolutions.

[D]

Yeah. I mean, revolutions are usually about money. So the American Revolution was about money.

[A]

We didn't want to pay that tax.

[D]

It was about taxation, but it was also about resources. All that sort of stuff. We know all that sort of stuff. You guys started, let's say, setting the rules of the game. Revolutions all need to be financed. There was an expression in America. I'm not sure if it's still used because not worth a continental. Is that still used? No, it certainly was used up until the 60s. And the continental was the currency of the revolutionary patriots, which was so devalued, so debunked, so debased, that this American expression, not worth the continental, was something that your fathers or grandfathers would have used all the time. So because the continental was this shit.

[A]

Currency, and that was the first one we came up with, that was your currency.

[D]

And the problem with the American Revolution is you have no money. So the Brits squeezed you so you'd no money. So the French lent you a little bit because they wanted you to win.

[A]

To piss off, because they hate the Fucking yeah, exactly.

[D]

So that's very simple, right? But of course, to pay the patriotic army, George Washington had to print a useless currency to keep everything going, called the Continental because of course that was the name of the United States before the United States became the United states. And in 1792 our friend Hamilton comes in and he goes, no, we've got to have a proper currency and we're going to call the currency the dollar. Now the fascinating thing was the dollar didn't exist in the lexicon of America because the dollar is a German expression called a thaler and thaler means valley. Most of the silver in Europe was found in a place called Jochim's Thaler, which is now in Czech Republic but then was in Germany. So the thaler was always seen in Europe as currency. The problem for the American revolutionaries was they were using the, the Spanish silver dollar which was called the real, which was coming from Mexico and they were using this as currency here. But even though the American patriots were anti British, they were English and their real DNA hated the Spaniards, so they couldn't name the currency after the real, after Spain. Hamilton, Washington, all those guys. So they said it, what name are we going to come up with?

[A]

Who do we not hate? Currently the Germans seem pretty.

[D]

Ah, the Germans, they'll have their day.

[A]

Again, don't worry, we'll get there, we'll get there. But today we like them.

[D]

All these stories are fascinating because they're the stories of us.

[A]

Well, here's where money has to be protected in some sense. So for the people who don't already know, I'm sure they do know. Post World War I Germany, as a product of the Treaty of Versailles, they get these incredible war reparations they have to make. And the end result of that is that their money becomes completely valueless, which is how we get Hitler. That's pretty well known. I didn't realize until your book, which is fascinating, is that Lenin, after the 1917 Russian Revolution he said, how do we get rid of all remnants of the Russian government to now try this experiment, Communism, we must completely annihilate the currency.

[D]

Yeah. And that's what they did.

[A]

And so he just printed all day long as much money as he could to make it fucking useless.

[D]

Think of the power.

[A]

That's how that revolution stuck.

[D]

That's how that revolution was successful. Yeah, that's the interesting thing, through money. When we read about the Russian revolution, we had Trotsky and the Red army and the battles and the White Russians and the Red Russians. Actually what Lenin did was so much more destructive because he said, okay, money exists in people's heads and stability exists in people's heads and this system exists in people's heads. So if I can destroy the very, very elemental tool of the system, I will destroy the system. And they destroy the ruble. So suddenly you have no savings, you have no income. You guys don't know how much money you have. If you have money. And he destroyed the Russian society from inside out.

[A]

It's the most destabilizing thing you can see.

[D]

The fascinating thing is all he did was destroy the assumption in people's heads.

[A]

Got them to not believe in the story.

[B]

But that disproves that one person can't have a huge impact. That's the opposite of the conspiracy theory.

[A]

You're right. If that person is totalitarian and can turn the printing press on, you're right. That person. But they can destroy Russia. They can't destroy the world.

[B]

Continues to do. It's still this.

[D]

But you think that Russia is the biggest country in the world. Yeah, Physically is an enormous country.

[A]

Most conspiracy theorists think there's a world cabal.

[D]

No, there's not.

[B]

Right.

[A]

I know.

[B]

I'm just saying.

[A]

Yeah, that's true.

[B]

There are individuals in history that do impact.

[D]

And Lenin was unbelievably intelligent person.

[A]

Yeah, that's so clever to think.

[D]

Scary as hell. You don't want that guy running your country.

[B]

Psychologically brilliant.

[D]

And Hitler learned from that.

[A]

Talk about the airdrop that Hitler was going to have.

[D]

So 19, 1941, the Luftwaffe, the Battle of Britain. The Germans had conquered France, that conquered Netherlands, they'd conquered Belgium, conquered Poland. They thought to themselves, okay, Britain, yeah, it's an island, but they won't fight. The Brits are obsessed by their empire. That's what's really important to them. And of course, the Brits fought and they were like, whoa. And the Brits beat them in the air. So they thought, we can't beat these guys in the air. We can't really invade them. What are we going to do? So you forget that Hitler lived through the Weimar Republic. So he saw the destruction of German democracy from the destruction of German money from the hyperinflation. He thought, okay, what we're going to do is we're going to replicate that in Britain. So how are we going to do this? Well, he said, we need to have the world's greatest and still today largest counterfeiting operation.

[C]

What?

[D]

So this actually happened. This is the real story. In 1941, Hitler and him got together and they Said what we're going to do is we are going to have the largest forgery operation ever in history. And we're going to forge British banknotes, five pound notes and we're going to airdrop them over the UK and we are going to destroy the spirit of the British people by destroying their money. Because this is what happened to us in Germany and that's why we are here. They figured out the reason we're here with our crazy Nazi regime is cause money was destroyed. And so in an amazing story, the Nazis sent out to concentration camps all over Europe flyers that they needed artists, mathematicians, printers, mechanical things, people who were good with paper, all that sort of stuff, right?

[A]

Even to the degree where they had the serial numbers, Correct, the serial numbers.

[D]

So they needed mathematicians, the whole thing. And so they went out and they found 127, I believe Jewish men who had been artists, bankers, serial numbers in the camps. And they brought them to a place called Sachsenhausen, which is a concentration camp outside of Berlin. It's only about 15 miles outside Berlin. So they took them from Auschwitz, they took them from everywhere and they brought them there. And their job was to break the bank of England. And they started in 1942. By 1943 they were ready to go.

[A]

They had printed, can I say, the equivalent of $10 billion.

[D]

What?

[B]

Oh my God.

[D]

It was 180, 84 million pounds in 42. The long and short of it, they came up with the currency. What was most difficult for them was to figure out the paper upon which the currency. They thought that the paper came from Malaya, or what we now call Malaysia. But actual fact, British currency was closed. It was washed and pulped, washed and pulped and washed and pulped and washed. And they figured that out. The watermark, the serial numbers, that wasn't the hard thing. The hard thing was the texture. So what they did was a Nazi turned up with a bucket load of this money in Switzerland in 1943. And he went, ironically, the bank I used to work for, UBS Union bank of Switzerland, which is kind of weird, he said to the Swiss bankers, I've just done a trade in Germany, I think this is counterfeit money. Can you check it for me? So the Swiss bankers checked it, their big headlights. And they came back about a week later and said, no, this money's cool.

[A]

They passed the ultimate.

[D]

The guy then doubled down. He said, look, I know you say it's real, but I'm really suspicious. Could you possibly send this to the bank of England to make sure that this is Real. So the Swiss bankers sent the batch to the bank of England. The bank of England came back a couple of days later and said, yeah, this is stuff we printed this morning. They said, this is our shit. Therefore the forgers had got it right. So the guy goes back to Saxon House and says, we're in business. They print it. And of course, the problem was the idea was to airdrop this stuff over Britain in 1943, 1944. But by that stage, the Germans were losing the war in Russia and they couldn't risk Luftwaffe planes because Luftwaffe planes were fighting in Russia. So they didn't have the planes, so they were going to airdrop the whole thing. It was called Operation Heinrich. Google it. It's amazing.

[A]

And that would have been. Even Churchill would have had a hard time straightening that.

[D]

What happens is, if you imagine if you walk out in the street here and dollar bills come out of the street, money everywhere.

[B]

Yeah.

[D]

You're going to put a few in.

[A]

Your back pocket and if it's indistinguishable, I mean, that could have been a tipping point.

[D]

The interesting thing is they had the money. So then what they do with it? The Nazis. So the last two years of the war, the Nazis bought all the art. They bought it all with this counterfeit money. So much so that they bought Mussolini out of captivity. So Mussolini was kidnapped by Italian communists at the end of the war. The Germans didn't capture him, they paid for him and they paid for him with counterfeited British notes.

[A]

So this money, is it in museums? I mean, has it been accounted for? Does it exist?

[D]

The amazing thing is the bank of England at the end of the war, was so worried about this money. So worried were they about the accuracy and the precision of these German counterfeits. And they knew there was millions of pounds out there that they retired all their five pound notes.

[B]

Yeah, that's smart redesign.

[C]

And they redesigned the whole thing, get.

[D]

Rid of the five pounds, because they were so aware that this was out there and it could undermine sterling. And of course, sterling was the dollar of the time. Sterling was the reserve currency of the world.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[B]

That's crazy.

[A]

That's why you need to think about it this way. That's why you need to take inflation seriously, crypto seriously.

[D]

You need to take all this stuff seriously.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare. Error. Let's end on crypto.

[D]

What we're talking about there is Hitler forging money, basically having his own printing press. Not in all senses, but in a sense all crypto is trying to do is replace the United States dollar.

[A]

I think the distinction people need to think about is money conventionally has been state ordained.

[D]

Money is state owned. Yes.

[A]

So crypto is private.

[D]

So this is the key thing. So for example, what gives the United States dollar its potency at the end of the day is the fact that the United States government requires you to pay your taxes in dollars. So the dollar is soldered onto the American economic system. I can't pay for a beer in euros here. I can't go to a bar. I can't do it. I need dollars. The American dollar and the United States system are one and the same thing. And they are provided by. By the state, a state that, whether you like it or not, is democratically elected. You have the institutions, the Federal Reserve. So money is public. The American dollar is a public good issued by the American state. Crypto is private money issued by private individuals. And private money means that the people who really, really benefit are the people who print it.

[B]

It's a business.

[A]

It's a business.

[D]

So it's not. Not actually money.

[C]

I'll go further.

[A]

It's a Ponzi scheme.

[D]

It's not even a business, I think.

[A]

So it only works if people are buying into it.

[D]

So for example, you say that you get death money. Think of money.

[B]

Well, that's also the way money works. It only works if everyone buys in, but we just have.

[A]

But it is backed by the state and it is related to something. It's related to gdp, it's related to death, it's related to interest rates.

[D]

Yeah, yeah. All the.

[A]

There's a ton of mechanisms to help keep it a trustworthy story.

[D]

Three months ago I was in Kenya. You fly into Kenya, find an Nairobi. You get into the back of a cab, taxi driver talks to you about dollars. What's the value of the dollar? So why is that? It's because the dollar is this universal currency that everyone understands the value of. In the book, I compare money to language. What gives money its potency is its usability that we all use it.

[A]

How many people does it unite? That's its total power.

[D]

The reason the English language is interesting is that the three of us can communicate using a language that maybe our grandparents didn't speak in my case. So we use this language as a technology so we can communicate together. English, if you were to look at it now, it's not the easiest grammatically. It's not the easiest phonetically. It's kind of weird. Night is N I G H T. Yeah.

[C]

Bullshit.

[B]

Don't get daxed on this.

[A]

No, he dislikes it. I could go on for three hours.

[D]

So then a knight is K, N I G H T. Right.

[A]

Okay.

[D]

If you were to invent a language today that the world would use to communicate, it wouldn't look like English.

[A]

Although can I add one thing? We were in India or at Microsoft learning about their AI. English is the most efficient language for AI. It costs 40% more to have AI working in Spanish. It is a very concise language. So it does. Weirdly now in this age.

[D]

I didn't know that.

[A]

It has a value, which is you need less syllables in data entry to convey. It costs more to run models in other languages.

[D]

So if you think the English language is the default language of the world, the dollar is the default currency of the world. So the way I look at crypto, crypto is like Esperanto. What's Esperanto? Esperanto was a language that was invented in Europe between the wars that was going to be the unifying language. Esperanto is incredibly important to people who speak it, but the rest of us don't give a shit.

[A]

It's still being spoken.

[D]

No, it's only academic. It's only academic right now. Right. Crypto is the Esperanto of money. Incredibly important to people who own Bitcoin. And they'll tell you, you'll sit in.

[A]

A bar and they'll tell you, no, it's a religion. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[D]

And the rest of us don't give a shit. No, you go down to the pub, you go down to the grocery store, give me the stuff in dollars. My point is that it's a private scam which is a function of social media, tech, bros, young males, all that stuff.

[A]

People with too much money that are constantly looking to diversify. An inflation proof.

[D]

People with no want.

[B]

That's why it's preying on vulnerable people who need.

[D]

It's the really rich and the really poor. The rest of us don't care.

[B]

Yeah, exactly.

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

And all of its appeal is all of the issues with it, right? So it's deregulated, there's no government oversight. But then when it's stolen, which so many people have had it stolen, there's no one to pick up the phone and call. There's no investigative body that's going to go out and find your money.

[D]

Remember, it was meant to be anti establishment. Who are the biggest traders in crypto now?

[A]

Wall street, governments, government.

[D]

The Trump, Trump family are now printing their own.

[B]

I'm surprised it Got this big here because I mean there's already so much conflict and issue around American health care, which is this private versus public. A lot of people want the government to take over health care and are mad at the private sector. So it's like why would you want that and then also want private money? That makes no sense to me.

[A]

Well, I can tell you what the sales pitch was is I should be able to move currency between David and I without the government having any sense of that, without them trying to tax it, without them being involved. It's my thing and it's your thing. We should have the freedom, we should have the liberty to do that.

[D]

That's the appeal.

[A]

But in function it doesn't operate that way.

[D]

We know that the vast, vast, vast majority of crypto, and I know bitcoin, it's not crypto, it's the crypto family. Right. It's the alternative money. The vast majority of this is still for criminal behavior. We know this, number one. Number two, the vast use of stablecoins is trading between people who already own stablecoins. It hasn't broken out into the world. I think we are looking at maybe the most spectacular heist foisted upon people that we have ever seen.

[A]

It's a pyramid scheme. It's a multi level marketing scheme. It's a promise of riches for nothing. It's all there in someone's feelings. Feelings are really hurt right now. And I get it. People have made a lot of money on it. So I don't hate on them. I understand the appeal. But ultimately someone's going to hold that back and it's not going to be the rich people.

[D]

Making a lot of money on something that's speculative isn't a sign of reality. It's part of the speculative mania that makes us human AI, the same sort of thing. What's going to happen when Nvidia or whatever the share price collapses? It's just a speculative thing. We are in, in a casino world.

[A]

By the way, we already watched NFTs come and go.

[D]

Yes, I remember them.

[A]

Talk about confirmation bias. That doesn't fit into my narrative. So I would just ignore the fact that there was billions of dollars lost in NFTs and that that's not even a thing people talk about. It'll go away like that.

[D]

It'll be the same. Yeah. Now will digital currencies matter? Of course they will. And the state, the central banks will issue digital dollars. I've been in America for two days, I have no not seen a dollar note.

[B]

It's all cashless, right?

[D]

You know, it's all cashless. So I've been here. I haven't seen a dollar note. At the end of the day, the Federal Reserve will issue digital dollars and that's it.

[B]

But isn't that what we already have?

[D]

We have that already. We have that already and we're going to migrate towards this. And some people want cash because they don't want to be traced. But as a general rule, the idea that some private tech bro is going to be issuing the money.

[A]

Yeah, I get that you don't trust the government. I get that you don't. But the notion that you trust an individual even more is fucking preposterous.

[B]

Million times over.

[D]

I can understand that.

[A]

Well, David, this has been a blast. I love this book and I'll tell you why. It's a great read. Because it is every bit as much a history book as it is a book about money. You're learning so many fascinating details about history from the beginning till now. So it's a very fun ride and it moves fast and you're full of characters and great stories. It's wonderful. The history of money. A story of humanity.

[C]

I really urge people to check it out.

[A]

This has been man, the light attacks.

[D]

I could be here all day.

[C]

As could we.

[A]

We have to police ourselves.

[D]

Thank you guys so much. Pleasure.

[B]

Stay tuned for the fact check. It's where the party's at.

[C]

How was the party?

[B]

There was a party last night. Rob and I were both there.

[C]

Rob, you better get behind a microphone so I can hear your your update too.

[B]

He was mingling and shmingling.

[C]

Oh, I bet he made a lot of connections.

[B]

It really fun. So yeah. Last night. Well, when this comes out, all will be over. We'll know the results.

[A]

All we revealed.

[B]

All will be revealed. But yeah, this week has a lot of events leading up to the Golden Globes. Last night was a Spotify by the Hollywood Reporter party.

[C]

Uh huh.

[B]

And. And it was really fun. It was really fun. Many friends of the POD there saw Kumail.

[A]

Oh, you did.

[B]

Ding ding, ding, ding. And Mel Robbins was there. Okay, great friend of the pod, Amy Poehler was there but I did not get to see her. She was walking out as I came in. I was sad to have missed her. I brought Anna as my plus one and she's the best plus one. Cause she's so fun.

[C]

Yeah. And she loves free drinks.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So it was great. So much fun. They threw a really good party of. Oh, Jackie was there. I hung out a Lot with Jackie Chuck. Yes.

[C]

Always a good time, Joe.

[B]

Jackie and Joe.

[C]

Jack and Joe. Always a good time, Jack and Joe.

[B]

Yeah. There's a song in there, Joe. Now. Yes, of course. Of course. Things can't be. Yeah, yeah. Not complaints. These are not complaints ever. These are, like, just insecurities.

[C]

Oh, yeah.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

Huh.

[B]

That I'm just. I'm just, you know, working through with. So, you know, we're invited to this, and you can't go. You're sick.

[C]

Yeah, we'll get to that.

[B]

Okay. And we get there, and Jordan, our old friend at Spotify, incredible man and father.

[C]

Yes.

[B]

And husband and son. I don't know how he is as a son.

[C]

I know, exactly, because his mom is Tom Hansen's partner. And I've met her, and she adores her Jordan.

[B]

Aw, that's nice. Anyway, Jordan's the best. And he. So, you know, he was arranging with me beforehand, and he was like, do you want a car? Do you want a. Whatever. And then he was like, let me. You know, tell me when you're pulling up. So I did. He's there. And he was like, let's. Let's expedite you through the carpet. And they had asked me before. They're like, I just spit. I'm cutting that.

[C]

Yeah. I couldn't see it from here. And I got an eye exam yesterday, so I would have been able to see it.

[B]

Okay, now people will rewind.

[D]

Yeah.

[B]

So he had asked me earlier. I was like, will you do the carpet? And I said, sure. So he's walking. He. He's trying to get me through. And then the. The man that's like. I don't know, the gatekeeper, but he's just a boy was like, only she can go. And I. I said to him. I was like, he's, like, running this party. And then. And Jordan was like, it's okay. I know. I'll. Whatever. I'll meet you on the. You stand by this. Whatever. It was like. Then it got chaotic. Okay, okay.

[D]

All right.

[B]

Because then he was gone and Anna was gone. And then I'm just standing, and I'm like, I don't know where. I don't know what to do now.

[C]

Yes.

[B]

So then. Then from the side, they're like, go this way. And I was like, okay. And then I'm still standing.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I end up on the carpet. I'm taking pictures. But then there's nobody.

[C]

Really quick, before we move on from pictures, what's your comfort level during those pictures?

[B]

It's so awkward. It's rough.

[C]

It's fucking awkward.

[B]

I want to look so cool and I just don't. And that's fine. Like it's fine.

[C]

You were gone so long too. Because we ran into Anna while you were at the carpet and she thought you were lost. She was in a scene.

[D]

I was.

[B]

Because Jordan was like, I'll meet you on the end of that car. So I was like looking for him because there was all these outlets and I knew I was supposed to do them but I didn't know how because I didn't have anyone there to help me.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So then I just walked off the carpet.

[C]

Okay.

[B]

So I didn't do any of those things I was supposed to do.

[C]

All right.

[B]

And I felt really like this is the thing. I'm always out of water.

[C]

This is the thing.

[A]

I, I talk about a lot on.

[C]

Here, which is, is like, it's difficult for me and I'm enormous and.

[B]

You mean tall.

[C]

Wise navigating the scenario. I'm a very big man who is not easily rattled. And as I always bring up the like upfronts when you go to New York and it's like here's this 5 foot 1, 18 year old woman from a CW show and she has to walk this gauntlet of all these maniacs and like it rattles me and I. So yeah, you were one of them. You're. You're just this little tiny person. Just a little mouse scurrying around the red carpet. Where do I stand?

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Am I supposed to smile or look seductive? I mean even the playful or panty dropper.

[B]

I did the pictures, which I was like, good. Like that's fine. But it was more like the outlets, which I knew I had said I would do. So I felt like, I know I'm supposed to, but nobody's. And someone was like, where's your publicist? And I was like, I don't have one.

[D]

Help.

[B]

So I just scurried off. My little mic mouse self scurried off. And then, and then I entered the party.

[C]

Well, rest assure on Sunday we'll be together.

[B]

Yeah, exactly. And we will have a publicist. Actually we'll have a few. So. Okay, that will be better. And I'm glad we're going to be doing it together. But I don't lose me. Cuz remember I'm so small.

[C]

No, I'm going to have two of you little people. So I gotta like bounce back and forth. It's gonna be a busy Sunday for.

[A]

Me on that red carpet.

[B]

Exactly. Any who so. But it was really fun.

[A]

Oh Good.

[B]

And you know, it is fun for me to get to wear cute outfits.

[C]

Yes. You love it.

[B]

I do love that.

[C]

Yeah. Dream come true.

[A]

They did have Ted Seager's partner last night.

[D]

Oh, fuck.

[C]

I can't believe I wasn't there.

[B]

I know. And they had. I told you this already, but they had little Appetizer Bites named after us. Yours was named. Yours was named Dax's Michigan Strip.

[C]

Was it a steaky?

[B]

Yeah, it was a seared petite filet steak atop a crisp polenta square, gluten free.

[A]

Oh, boy. Yeah.

[C]

I feel lousy now.

[A]

I.

[C]

There's no possible way I could have gone because I was like, I gotta go. I love Jordan and I. And I owe him so much, and I gotta go. And then, yeah, I got sick on December 15th, and as I've already talked about, I went to New York with my brother and just went hard, hard, hard. I've never shook this car cold even until I got back. And then my sweet, sweet friend from London, England, Jethro, came to visit, and he's staying at the house, and we've been hanging out and saunaing together. And he hit me, I guess, Tuesday morning. He's like, oh, my God, dude, I feel so terrible. I hope I didn't get you sick. And I'm like, I'm already sick. I probably got you sick. I'm sorry. But no, no, no, no. It definitely had a new flavor. So it was like a second. And some second virus entered the scenario.

[A]

Scenario. Two front wars, they would say, and.

[B]

You'Re in the sauna. It's like, you definitely got it.

[C]

And we're kissing and talking.

[B]

Yeah, but the sauna is really how it happened.

[C]

Yes.

[B]

So now. Yeah, now you have a new.

[C]

So really, it started going downhill, and I was kind of ignoring them. Oh, it's the same thing I already have. No, it got much, much worse. So yesterday I woke up, I was like, I'm in trouble. I'm in. I'm in trouble. Let's hope this.

[B]

And we have a big weekend.

[A]

Huge weekend.

[C]

And I had made a commitment to my. My sweet oldest girl that I was gonna take her to the go kart track. Now, backstory about the go kart track. I took her one time, like, three years ago with my fantasy of her starting to race go karts. I took her to K1. She wrote our first session with the juniors, and these boys were passing her a bunch, and she thought she was terrible, and she just didn't want to do it again.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

I was like, fuck, man. There goes that dream. So anyways, out of the blue, I was like, if you ever wanna go to the go kart track, I wanna go. Oh, I wanna go. Okay.

[A]

So the whole ride there, she's like.

[C]

I go, you're going to ride in the adults. You're tall enough now. You're, you're five feet. So you can ride in the adult carts. No, I want to ride in the junior cars. I'm like, we're going to ride together. We're going to do this as a team. I got you. I'm going to ride behind you so no one can hit you. Like, I'm going to be running buffer behind you.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

I don't know.

[C]

We check in and she's even trying to talk the workers into putting her into the junior. She's going with me and the adults. So there's two different tracks at K1. One one's bigger and one's smaller. So the first session, we're on the big track and there was four other strangers out there, adults. And first lap was a little wobbly, shaky. Second lap, she started to get the, the feel. She started getting comfortable. By the end of this 10 minute session, she was like totally comfortable in the car. We got out and she was like elated, happy.

[B]

Great.

[C]

And you get times there were six adults. Yeah. And she came in third.

[B]

Nice.

[C]

And her time was 34. Okay. You gotta remember 34. So we come off the track and now I wanna teach her a little bit about the strategy. So I go to the big map of the track on the wall and I start explaining to her how to go through corners. And I like explain the whole thing to her. I don't take a ton of time. Maybe we're looking at that map for 10 minutes. I'm explaining stuff.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Then we go to a brand new track, the smaller track, and I start behind her. And within one lap, this fucking kid is on the race line the entire time. I'm like, oh, my God, did she get that quick? I was like smiling ear to ear behind her. Yeah, it was so fun. She like really loved the second session. We go back to the big track for our third one. And as we're walking to the thing, I said, well, what's our goal? And she said, I don't know. And I said, I think you gotta break 30 if you started at 34.

[A]

34.

[B]

Okay, okay.

[C]

Breakthrough. She's like, oh, I'm 30, that's four seconds. So we get on the track and we're going. And she's just Monica. I'm not, I'm not like proud dadding it. It's bonkers. How natural.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

We get off the track 27.

[B]

Wow.

[C]

And I gotta tell you, when I.

[B]

Go with the boys, seven seconds speeding.

[C]

When I go with all the guys and I. And I generally am in first. I pulled up those old ones. Cause I can look at them in my ear email. I'm running 24s. I'm winning with 24s. And she was running 27 on her first day.

[B]

That's amazing.

[A]

Oh, was I happy.

[C]

And then I was completely dead sure. Cycling through fever, chill, fever, chill, fever, chill. And. And then I felt terrible that I didn't go to that party. But I woke up and I have to say, definitely on the upswing. I was like, okay, I'm done with the fever part. I can tell.

[B]

Okay, yeah.

[C]

Time to move the body a little bit and get going. I know you get really upset when I, I mean, try not to get mad at me.

[B]

I mean, I'm a little mad at you in the way that you would be mad at me. And you do get mad at me if I'm like, ow, my back hurts. I'm like, why aren't you drinking water or taking this? And. And you get mad at me. And I said, don't get mad at me. And you say, well, you're not taking care of my friend.

[A]

That's true.

[B]

That's what you say to me.

[C]

But could you find. All I'll ask is if you could find a scientific paper or study that says you shouldn't work out while you're sick. And if that's the truth, I'll abide by it. But I don't think that's the truth.

[B]

Okay, it is. And so doctors, I'd like you to weigh in and I'll also find some studies on it. Okay, you can do some light.

[C]

Yeah, I went pretty light today.

[B]

But I mean, no, like walk. Like you can like take a walk, but if your body is trying to recover it, it needs to.

[C]

Yeah, but I have to manage two things. I have to manage the illness and then I have to manage my temperament. And I just was completely stagnant two days. And that'll with me. So that's also for me.

[B]

I know, but then you're just going to be sick for like eight months then, which is not like you have to give your body some time to really recover.

[C]

Okay.

[A]

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert if you dare.

[B]

Now, my snack was called Monica's Standards. And I love.

[C]

I wish I got that. What's the standards?

[B]

Standards. Oh, done.

[C]

You think that's obvious?

[B]

I think so.

[C]

I think of music standards. Sinatra. I'm like, do you have favorite.

[B]

What did you think, Rob?

[D]

I got it. But.

[B]

Okay. Because it was Mel's permission slip. Amy's. Yes. And Dax's Michigan strip. Monica's standards. I think it was clear.

[C]

Are you going to do the update or do you want me to? I think you should read it in its entirety.

[D]

Oh, yeah.

[B]

Okay.

[C]

This is one of the funnest ding, ding, dings we've had on the show.

[B]

For me, this is really fun. Also, there's another one. This is a separate thing. What did you send me, Rob?

[C]

Oh, there was.

[D]

Someone sent pictures of the Kmart thing.

[B]

Oh, yeah, your shirt. The shirt I got you for your birthday.

[D]

Yeah.

[B]

Someone sent an email. Pull it up. This is from Rob. So this person, Stephanie.

[C]

Oh, my gosh.

[B]

Reached out. She said, listening to the podcast yesterday, and her dex opened his birthday gift from Monica. My first job out of Ohio State University was traveling manager for the KKRAD Kmart Kids Race Against Drugs program.

[C]

Me, I said, sinbad. So there's a photo up now of Sinbad on a lawn tractor that they put a fake hood scoop on and it's all stickered up with the Kmart.

[B]

I guess this is a ding, ding, ding.

[C]

I wonder if this program ever, like, it'd be impossible to measure it, but do you think it kept a single kid off drugs?

[B]

Yeah.

[D]

You do?

[B]

I. I really was affected by the DARE program. I never did drugs.

[A]

Do you think because of the DARE program?

[B]

Yeah.

[D]

Okay.

[B]

Me and 60 plus other post grads got paid to travel the country for six months setting up this giant racetrack in Kmart parking lot. See if that shows up.

[A]

Oh, I would have loved this.

[B]

Yeah. She said it was a party. We would give kids the opportunity to race a slick looking lawnmower and one year later, a golf cart made to look like a Ford Mustang. Thanks to sponsorship from Ford. We love Ford. We love Jim Farley.

[C]

I'm going to Detroit next week to unveil the new Red Bull race car. And I'm going to hang with Max Verstappen W and Jim Farley, Fun and Hajar, their new driver, and I think Ricardo.

[B]

Oh, fun.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Well, we love Jim. He's a nice man.

[A]

We do.

[B]

Friend of the pod. So nice.

[C]

I got some sweet Fords I love, too.

[B]

Okay. For each child that went through the race, Kmart donated $5,000 to the local DARE program. All the kids and volunteer staff received a free T shirt like the one Monica got taxed for his birthday. A lot of celebrities joined the cause from city to city, including, including Dick Clark, Mary Lou Retton, Paul Newman. He had. You have the same shirt as Paul Newman.

[C]

Oh my goodness.

[B]

Kathy Island. Shaq Mary from Gilligan's Island.

[C]

You notice there's no pictures of Shaq in any of those vehicles. Not a chance.

[B]

He's getting a mini Mustang. Do it front of the pod. Anyway, that's adorable. I know. I thought that was so cute.

[C]

But alas, that is not the. That's not the so cute. That's. Thank you for sending that.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

But this.

[C]

And I'm going to remind people in case they didn't listen to the fact check for Walter Isaacson, we discussed our flight home from Nashville. You were seated next to a cute boy. That cute boy started interacting a lot with the gal across the aisle from him.

[B]

Then they I thought it was a meet cute.

[C]

You thought it was a meet cute? I was suggesting it was. They were already lovers. And now we received this email.

[B]

Yes. Emma sent me a text. She said the girl you saw holding hands with that guy on the plane is an armchair and wrote into AA.

[C]

By luck she happened to hear that fact check.

[B]

Yeah, she's a good listener. She said, I was listening to the Walter Isaacson fact check and I am the girl from the January 3rd Nashville to LAX meet cute. I heard Monica recount the meet cute she thought she was witnessing between me and my boyfriend, which is now a very fun treasured memory for us us. After listening, I felt bad and I wanted to figure out some way to let her know he didn't pick someone else over her in that moment. I checked the website as a long shot to see if there was a quick way to send an email and saw Meet Cute as a prom. So hopefully this gets to her in some way. The full story from the other side of the aisle. My boyfriend and I were supposed to fly back from Nashville to LA on January 2nd. Last minute we were able to snag a reservation at the restaurant Locust on the night we were supposed to leave. So we decided decided to pivot the flight to January 3rd. Rob just made a noise so that must be.

[C]

He just came.

[A]

Logan is great.

[B]

I'm glad they got to go. We had a mix up when rebooking our seats, so instead of sitting next to one another, we were sat across the aisle from one another. My boyfriend saw Dax get on the plane and tap me because he knows Armchair is my favorite podcast. While I was trying to act cool. The girl sitting next to me struck up a conversation, which is why my boyfriend wasn't talking to me and didn't appear to be with me when Monica first sat down. When I went to talk to him, I saw Monica sitting there. In an effort to give her privacy, I started texting my boyfriend rather than leaning into the aisle to talk. I also think people were still boarding the plane so it's difficult to talk. Anyway, the irony is that while Monica was building this scenario out, I was thinking two things. 1. Sim I just downloaded all of season 5 of Friends to watch on this flight. I was locked into Friends and he was locked into his book. 2. I've listened to the podcast for years and so I've heard Monica talk about meet cutes immediately when I saw her sitting next to him. I was hoping she wasn't thinking about this as a meet cute because she deserves one at My boyfriend is a little oblivious and wouldn't notice if she flirted with him. It was also hard enough for me to get attention on that flight. That said, Sam was looking great. That must be the boyfriend and reading so I wouldn't have blamed her. I had a crush on him too. I've listened to the podcast for years and realized I was being a little over the top thinking this person I've never met would think about a meet cute with my boyfriend when in reality the girl is really just trying to sleep on this late night flight. I did ask him to hold my wine when I went to the bathroom and we did hold hands during the turbulence, which there was a lot of because I've become a bit of a nervous fox liar. I've been with my boyfriend for three years, but it made me feel so happy to hear someone I think of as an absolute badass, an incredible businesswoman, and someone I am personally grateful for. With race to 35 describe our interactions. You don't typically get to hear unfiltered versions of how strangers observe you. It's a very interesting feeling driving home from work, turning on a podcast and hearing that someone perceived your actions as falling in love. I also have to thank Monica and Dax. In a lot of instances, it would have been very easy to try and make yourself or a friend feel better by cutting down the other girl in this scenario scenario. I respect them both for fostering a story that built us up, A story that my boyfriend and I both feel represents our love.

[C]

I love that email.

[B]

It's so good. I love it. Shout out to what I still consider a Meet cute. Okay, now it's a meet cute between me and her.

[A]

There we go.

[D]

It is.

[C]

This is the Locust dinner. Oh, he's still thinking back there rubbing himself their dessert.

[A]

This is like a shave ice with.

[C]

Whipped cream on top.

[B]

Is it an egg on top?

[C]

No, it looks like an egg, but it's a insane.

[A]

It's a goiter.

[D]

I'm still thinking about that dessert. Yeah.

[B]

Oh no, it's a carbuncle. It does look delicious. Anyway, that's it.

[C]

That's that.

[A]

That was a good update.

[B]

Yeah, it was a really good update. Okay, so yeah, let's do some facts. Okay. David. So he said air travel is new. Newish. Like we forget, you know.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And so then I was looking that up. We all know that the Wright brothers had a successful flight. That was in 1903. Kitty Hawk.

[A]

Great book, by the way. David McCullough, Wright Brothers book. That's great.

[B]

Oh, nice. But really it became mainstream in the 50s and 60s. Sure. So transitioning from luxury to common transportation for it. So that is so recent of the.

[A]

Many things we're gonna do with our time machine. The list is so long. I don't know when I'll get to this, but I would like to go back in time to like 1962 and fly Pan Am.

[B]

Oh, I know.

[A]

First class. And see like, was it crazy? Like did they really pamper you? Treat you like you were royalty?

[B]

Yeah. I have a question about going back in time.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

Do you think if you go back in time you could die? Like you could die for sure. Oh yeah.

[A]

And it'd be so confusing because on your headstones say born in 1987, died in 1950.

[B]

That's what doesn't make any sense. Wow, that's a movie. That is a movie.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

It's like some kids are going through the cemetery and then they stumble across that.

[A]

And it's weird because they were so tight lipped about the technology that they had time travel. But then they just put it blatantly on a headstone that'll be a addressed later loosely in the third act. Hopefully so much will be going on.

[B]

You not just with one line of.

[A]

Dialogue, clean everything up.

[B]

Okay. Was Kushim or Kushim, now I forget the first name ever written. Yes, all, all his facts were correct, basically. I did do some checking though, because I was like, can that be right? And then yes, it was. It's. He's widely considered the earliest known individual name in recorded history, appearing on Sumerian clay tablets from around 3200 BCE in ancient Mesopotamia. Is algebra an Arabic word? Yes, meaning restoration, reunion of broken parts, or completion.

[A]

Ooh, completion.

[B]

Yeah, I like that. Were you about to say something?

[C]

I was.

[A]

I was gonna say how Lincoln always says, was that back in the 1900s?

[B]

Oh, God.

[A]

And it sounds like a joke, and it is. But it's not a joke.

[B]

It's not a joke.

[A]

Was that in the 1900s?

[B]

She'll say, it's so depressing. It's so depressing.

[A]

Sounds like it sounds like 300 years ago.

[B]

It really does. It's really funny. It's a good joke. Okay, so is English the most efficient language for AI? English is considered one of the most information dense languages. Meaning it conveys a lot of meaning with fewer syllables, but it. It is. It said it is not definitively the most efficient, as efficiency can be measured differently. Studies show it has a higher information rate, meaning personal. I mean, that's just in general. So AI. Yes. But languages like Spanish and French compensate with faster speech rates, balancing out overall information delivery, making them comparably efficient in terms of. Of overall speed and communication. Verbally, obviously.

[A]

Although we found out when our stuff was converted to Spanish, they clearly did not pick up our speed of talking. And it was about 1.6 as long.

[B]

I know, because I think what they were doing was keeping our speed, our.

[A]

Cadence and our speed.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And it meant made it. Which is funny because we experienced that right before we went to India and sat with the AI people who told us it was more efficient.

[B]

Right, exactly.

[A]

But I was like, it has to be more efficient. Why? Why would it take an hour and a half to say what we said in an hour?

[B]

I know, but also, if. If a Spanish person was saying it, they would be saying it so much faster.

[A]

You just have to talk really fast. But the computer runs at a standard.

[B]

Right, Exactly. These are two separate things, but yeah, it's weird. Oh, and then I was looking up syllables for languages. Languages with very few syllables often have simple structures. Rotacas, Papua New guinea, having one of the smallest inventories around 50 possible syllables due to few consonants and vowels. Isn't that interesting?

[A]

Very interesting.

[B]

And Japanese being notable for its extremely small set of 107 syllables.

[C]

Oh, yeah.

[A]

Papua New guinea is one of the most fascinating places for many reasons, but it's one of the places where cannibalism has been well documented.

[D]

Yeah.

[B]

That's crazy.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Is it still?

[D]

I doubt it.

[A]

Yeah. But that's also where they were weaning. They weaned children off of breastfeeding with Cigarettes. And yet no lung cancer. There's, like, a lot of interesting stuff.

[B]

Very.

[A]

It still occurs.

[D]

In really isolated cultures.

[A]

Like parts of Papa.

[D]

Papua New Guinea.

[A]

And it's different than you would think because I had actually had a class on this in anthro, which is like, I think they consume their dad, like, as a part of.

[B]

Oh, I think I've heard that.

[A]

As a. Like a respect ritual. Not like, we're hungry, let's eat. One of the members of the group.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[D]

It's from corpses. It says.

[A]

Yeah. Wow. God.

[B]

Do you think it's like. Like when you go to KFC and it's like, I'd like a drumstick.

[A]

You want, like, a finger? Like, everyone has their favorite body part.

[B]

Favorite part. It's like, can I have the.

[A]

Already get the nose? Yeah.

[B]

I really want the calf. C. You always get the calf.

[A]

You got the calf last time. Do you think, as you're like your grandparents aging and getting terminal, that you're with them and you're kind of eyeing them like, I got to eat some piece of this guy.

[B]

What do I want?

[A]

What? Like, do you think you'd be distracted with knowing you're about to eat some of this guy? Trying to find, like, oh, that area, that little patch of skin looks really healthy.

[B]

Yeah, exactly.

[A]

I hope I get that.

[D]

I don't.

[B]

I bet if it's just part of your customs you really like, it's nothing, you know, You.

[A]

Of course.

[B]

Yeah. Do you think they cook it?

[A]

I should know that. I can't remember be a long time.

[B]

Ago, how much money was lost in NFTs. While exact total figures are elusive, the NFT market saw massive losses following its 2021 peak, with reports indicating 90 to 99% of collections lost significant value.

[A]

Value.

[B]

Leaving millions with effectively worthless digital assets.

[A]

I kind of don't even feel bad.

[B]

For those people either. I mean, I do.

[A]

It was just such a cash grab.

[B]

I know, but people are desperate.

[A]

People want money, they're desperate to get something for nothing. Which I'm not very sympathetic.

[B]

I understand. But, like, they're just desperate to have something.

[A]

Yeah. And I was even wrestling with this last. Last night.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I was thinking about, like, investing and, like, what percentage is acceptable? And mostly you just. You. You have to outpace. Inflation is the goal. But what's funny is, like, but why could. Why is that even possible? Like, this notion that you're. You put your money here and then they use.

[C]

Get paid.

[B]

I know.

[A]

Ideally something above 4%.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And, like, people are you know, they're bummed if they're not making 10% percent. It's like, for doing what exactly? Parking your money over there? It's kind of. It is goofy.

[B]

I know.

[A]

And I too. I'm like, yeah, I gotta be making. It's like, why are you gonna get. You didn't go. You didn't show up and work. You didn't do anything.

[B]

It's. It's because. It's all comparison. It's like, because that guy has 10. I should have that.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

It's not about what you're doing to get it right. Doing. Everyone's doing nothing to get. Although I guess in your head you're like, no, but if I traded. Correct. Like you do make it about your own actions.

[A]

You convince yourself you have worked your way into riches.

[B]

Exactly. Yeah. What happened to your arm?

[A]

What happened to my arm? Oh, I have a doodad stuck to it.

[B]

That was just a doodad.

[A]

What if you thought that was a skin tag? I thought, oh, you have a new tumor.

[B]

I thought it was a band aid.

[A]

I mean, look, if we do this long enough, I'm just gonna have, like, fucking things hanging off of all skin tags everywhere. We'll have to go back. We'll be the first show that went from audio to video, then back to audio.

[B]

All right, thanks.

[A]

Love you.

[B]

You.

[A]

Follow Armchair Expert on the Wondry app, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to every episode of Armchair Expert early and ad free right now by joining Wondry plus in the Wondry Wonry app or on Apple Podcasts. Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short [e-mail] survey.