Gillian Tett
speaker
1,226 appearances
12 recordings
1 series
first heard May 2026
last heard 2 Sep
Gillian Tett’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 12 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 4.
Appearances
So, to help us tell the story of the Erie Canal and why it matters so much, we have got a financial history superstar with us today.
He is the historian Richard Siller, or Dick Siller, Professor Emeritus of Economics at the New York University's Stern School of Business.
Welcome, Dick.
So technically your professor Scylla, I'm gonna call you Dick if that's okay.
But we're gonna be talking a lot in this episode about a book that's one of Robin's favourite.
Take it away, Robin.
Why do you care so much about this book and why is Dick so relevant to it?
So what we're actually talking about today though is his book about the Erie Canal.
And it begins in the years after the American Revolution.
Now, the country has just won the war.
The founding fathers are working on getting the Constitution written and unifying the states, and it's all very, very exciting.
But as so often there are some really big glitches.
The country is also crying out to be united not just in the political theory, but also through trade and economics.
And they didn't really have that, did they?
Why was it so hard?
Yeah, hands up, I've never even heard of him properly before.
Why do they suck him in to lead the charge around
Something which is not usually the stuff of high politics, which is how to finance a canal.
So they went bankrupt in the end, wasn't it?
It was a good basic disaster.
Showing 401–420 of 1,226 · page 21 of 62
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