Brendan Greeley

I want to go get a PhD in the history of money.

And they all said, no, do not do that.

That's a terrible idea.

As PhDs generally do.

But I applied to the program at Princeton because Harold James is there.

He's a legendary financial historian.

And I love the way he works because he takes finance seriously.

And sometimes it's difficult to study the history of money because it does end up sounding like this 2 a.m.

dorm conversation.

That frustrates me.

I actually don't think money is that hard to understand.

It's just finance.

And so Harold James takes the finance of money seriously.

And I was able to, you know, while I was taking classes there, think about this book and also make myself feel a little more comfortable that the book is in fact, it rests on solid ground.

The people that I found as secondary sources, they are known to other people, right?

And I am, this book is written within a tradition of thinking about money as credit and that, but also to your point, like, yeah, it's great.

I love going back and getting a PhD.

There was a moment early on where I was doing a project with another grad student and the

They're all in their 20s and I make no sense to them because I was like 47 when I started it and I had four children and everything about me was a mystery.

They had a pool going for a while and whether or not I was on Instagram.