Episode Details

This episode starts with my six-year-old walking up to me one afternoon and asking, "Dad, what's a sixpence?" I follow that question all the way down.

I dig into the 400-year life of the sixpence, a British coin quietly debased over decades until there was no silver left in it at all, and finally withdrawn in 1980, largely without anyone noticing while it happened. From there I get into what debasement actually looks like in real time, why every generation assumes the money it grows up with is permanent, and why being a good capital allocator means being a student of change as much as a student of markets.

Also covered: the books that have shaped how I think about money (Menger, Lynn Alden, Saifedean Ammous), where Bitcoin fits into this story without being the whole story, and the question I've been sitting with since that conversation: what do I own today that feels permanent, but probably isn't?