History of Money, Banking, and Trade
A historical look at the development and evolution of money, banking, and trade. From the ancient civilizations to the present.
History of Money, Banking, and Trade
Latest Episodes
Episode 57. Two Roman Stories: A Credit Crunch and Volcanic Explosion
Rome didn’t just build roads and legions, it built a credit machine. And in 33 CE, that machine seized up in a way that feels painfully familiar: a property crash, a liquidity freeze, bank failures, panic hoarding, and a government rescue that ...
Episode 56. Rome Becomes Powerful When Its Money Does
Rome is not just marble temples and marching legions. It is benches in the Forum where money changers listen to coins ring, wax tablets that lock in loans, and quiet banking networks that keep grain ships moving and armies paid. Once you look a...
Episode 55. The Punic Wars: Rome, Carthage, and Power
Rome and Carthage don’t start as mortal enemies, they start as trading partners signing treaties that quietly reveal who holds real power at sea. From the very first agreement, Carthage looks like the obvious favorite: a Phoenician-descended co...
Episode 54. From She Wolves To Silver Coins In Ancient Rome
Rome doesn’t introduce itself with a feel-good origin story. We start with the myth Rome tells about itself, from Aeneas and divine ancestry to the she-wolf on the Palatine, and then we sit with the part most civilizations would hide: Romulus k...
Episode 53. When Philosophers Feared Money More Than War
Coinage didn’t just make trade easier in ancient Greece, it reshaped the city itself. I walk through how money becomes a geographic force that pulls people toward marketplaces, builds a new kind of commercial Athens, and sets off an economic ch...
