Versus History Podcast | 11 September 2020 | 0h 51m | Listen Later | iTunes
Interview with Thomas Levenson about his book Money for Nothing: The South Sea Bubble and the Invention of Modern Capitalism. Backgrounds the South Sea Bubble and how it lead to the birth of modern financial capitalism – the idea that you can invest in future prosperity and that governments can borrow money to make things happen. Also explores how the scientific revolution extended to the idea that empiricism and maths could make sense of everyday life; and how the invention of modern ideas about money both made the world rich and exposed us to predictable hazards that we fail to fully prepare for.