Robin Wigglesworth

speaker

1,983 appearances 13 recordings 1 series first heard May 2026 last heard 12 Aug

Robin Wigglesworth’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

Trend

recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 13 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 5.

Appearances

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The Story of Money · The US dollar’s ‘immigrant’ origins · 24 Jun 2026 podcast

Well, so is standardization here the the crucial aspect that this is something that has one size, one quality, and everybody kind of accepts it, and therefore that becomes kind of a unofficial reserve currency for large parts of Europe at the time. voice-verified

So the dollar has kind of become synonymous with money long before the birth of the United States. voice-verified

Broadly accepted, high quality, universally acknowledged and accepted form of m medium of exchange. voice-verified

But have you ever held one yourself, like a a proper original OG Yorkimstala in your hands? voice-verified

Yeah, because there could must have been other currencies, right, that were in theory could have been the taler, like something that was broadly accepted of gold or silver or whatever, right? voice-verified

What's special about the tala? voice-verified

Yeah, I can almost hear to my horror the Bitcoin Bros punching the ear as they hear that. voice-verified

Wow. voice-verified

So these countries all sort of i independently at various times all essentially hitched their monetary sovereignty or or adopted a supranational currency that existed hundreds of years long before these countries ever existed, essentially, because it was pre-existing and established and widely acknowledged and used around the world. voice-verified

As they are being now, right? voice-verified

Yeah, 'cause there won't have been any pro plague coins, I'm guessing. voice-verified

Yeah. voice-verified

But it is fascinating that this silver mine in Bohemian 1515 essentially kind of births this supercurrency that transcends sovereignty. voice-verified

And you talked about how it was a feature, not a bug, but it seems it's actually the the killer USP. voice-verified

Like what is actually the selling point for the taler that becomes the dollar is that it is outside of any sovereign control, that it is not the Gilda that's tied to the Dutch. voice-verified

Or the a Florentine Ducat or the Sterling, which its fate is somehow entwined into the waxing and waning of the great powers. voice-verified

It transcends all that. voice-verified

And that's why the dollar is so powerful. voice-verified

It actually indicates that even if the US were to decline, actually the dollar can shrug all that off anyway, because there is a kind of, I guess use the economist phrase, a revealed preference from the entire voice-verified

in a world to have something that we all agree is money and we can exchange it, whether it's we're talking sort of bank transfers, trade, uh secu financial securities, whatever really. voice-verified

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