Money & markets
The economy, the markets, and the money in your pocket. What moved, why it matters, and how the system really works.
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In 1970s America, a bookkeeper named Bruce Bent and his partner built the first money market fund to let ordinary savers earn bank-level returns. Decades later, that same invention 'broke the buck' in a 2008 panic that froze the plumbing of the global financial system. This is the story of a product designed for safety that became a hidden fault line.
In 1980, two Texas oil heirs tried to buy nearly all the world's silver, driving prices up eightfold before a single rule change destroyed them. This is the story of how the Hunt brothers nearly broke a commodities market and what happens when private fortunes collide with public exchanges.
In 2022 a single trader's bet against nickel prices spiraled into an $8 billion loss overnight, and the 145-year-old London Metal Exchange did something almost unthinkable: it canceled billions in trades and rewound the market as if the day never happened. This episode traces how one cornered position exposed the fragile human decisions behind a market that claims to be neutral.
Discover how Lloyd’s of London prices the impossible, from satellite launches to celebrity body parts.
Discover why the 1637 tulip crash wasn't the total economic apocalypse history books often claim.
Discover how a 19th-century diamond glut triggered a marketing masterpiece that manufactured artificial rarity and the engagement ring tradition.
How investors profit when a stock falls, why the practice is so controversial, and how a crowd of retail traders turned short sellers' own bets against them in the GameStop frenzy.
How the arrangement to price global oil in US dollars entrenched the dollar's dominance and handed the United States extraordinary financial leverage — and what could unwind it.
How money really moves — the mechanics behind the headlines, one episode at a time. Listen to how central banks conjure money from nothing, how the 2008 crisis detonated through a single instrument, why pricing oil in dollars handed the US so much leverage, and what actually happens when a currency dies. The stream mixes evergreen mechanics with what markets are doing right now, so the economy stops being background noise and starts making sense on the commute.
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