Robin Wigglesworth

There are things that are relevant that happened sometimes even thousands of years ago that actually we can learn from today.

So I'm pretty excited about, you know, finally bringing this out to life.

Well, let's say ancient Mesopotamia.

They had a debt problem as well.

And occasionally, the way they solved it was to have debt jubilees.

Typically, when a new ruler like Hammurabi came to power, they'd just say, well, all debts are now cancelled.

And it sucked for the lenders, but it was great for everybody else.

And it kind of helped reset the economy.

It was a bit like switching your computer off and on again.

And, you know, I don't think maybe you should have a debt jubilee in the modern economy.

That would be potentially quite disastrous.

But I do think it's pretty cool that people thought in unorthodox ways to solve some of these issues that we still confront today.

A classic one is, you know, what is money?

I mean, we call the show The Story of Money, and it's a red thread that goes through quite a lot of episodes.

And I think probably quite a few episodes that are going to happen in the coming year is what exactly is money?

Because it's...

really far more fungible and complicated than you might think.

So for example, in 19th century America, you know, for a long period, the US didn't have a central bank, state chartered banks could kind of print whatever money they wanted.

And quite a lot of those banks were pretty dodgy.

And at the same time, this was like an incredible fertile environment for money forgers.