Why money is the biggest shared hallucination in human history

What is money? And what can a small island in Micronesia teach us about how it works? On Yap, a remote island in the western Pacific, giant calcite “Rai” stones once functioned as currency, where ownership and collective trust — rather than physical possession — defined wealth and status. In this episode of The Story of Money, macroeconomist and author Felix Martin joins hosts Gillian Tett and Robin Wigglesworth to explore the stones of Yap, the origins of money and why the traditional “barter theory” may be a myth.

Further reading:

Money: The Unauthorised Biography (2015) by Felix Martin 

Uap of the Carolines (1910) by William Henry Furness III

A Treatise on Money (1930) by John Maynard Keynes 

The Island of Stone Money (1991) and Money Mischief (1992) by Milton Friedman  

‘Tralla La’ in Uncle Scrooge #6 by Carl Barks (1954) 

His Majesty O’Keefe (1954) Warner Bros 

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Hosts: Gillian Tett and Robin Wigglesworth

Guest: Felix Martin

Producer: Lulu Smyth

Senior Producers: Laurence Knight and Michela Tindera

Executive Producers: Flo Phillips and Manuela Saragosa

Original music: Breen Turner

Broadcast engineers: Bianca Wakeman and Petros Giuompasis

Podcast Development: Laura Clarke

FT Global Head of Audio: Cheryl Brumley

Video editors: Kristen Kenyon and Josh Divney at Podcast Discovery

Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com

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