The Economic History Podcast with Fexingo: Past Recessions, Booms, and Lessons from History

Lucas and Luna revisit the economic ripple effects of the Apollo 11 moon landing in July 1969. They explore how NASA's massive spending on microelectronics, computing, and materials science created unexpected commercial spinoffs that fueled the 1970s tech sector. The episode focuses on the integrated circuit: from military and space use to calculators, watches, and early personal computers. They d...

In the summer of 1956, Japan's Economic Planning Agency published a terse government report that contained a single explosive phrase: 'The postwar is over.' That three-word sentence didn't just announce an economic milestone — it effectively rewrote the country's national strategy and launched one of the most remarkable growth spurts in modern history. Lucas and Luna dig into the White Paper's act...

In this episode of The Economic History Podcast, Lucas and Luna examine the Panic of 1907, a severe financial crisis that nearly collapsed the U.S. banking system. They focus on the role of J.P. Morgan, who personally orchestrated a private rescue by gathering bankers in his library to raise liquidity. The episode explores how the panic exposed the fragility of an unregulated banking system and di...

In the spring of 1934, a massive dust storm carried prairie topsoil all the way to Washington D.C. and New York City, darkening the sky for hours. At its peak, the Dust Bowl covered 100 million acres across the Great Plains, displacing 2.5 million people and destroying the livelihoods of thousands of farm families. Lucas and Luna examine how the catastrophe reshaped American agriculture: the forma...

To mark episode 100, Lucas and Luna examine the economic aftermath of the 1918 influenza pandemic—not the public health story, but the lasting shifts in labor markets, wage structures, and government welfare programs. They focus on a specific data point: the 1920s saw a permanent 5-8% wage premium for workers in cities that experienced severe outbreaks, as employers had to compete for scarce labor...

In this episode of The Economic History Podcast, Lucas and Luna uncover the story of a single 1670 barter trade in Haarlem where a brewer exchanged a brewery for a single rare tulip bulb — the Semper Augustus. That trade, they argue, was the real spark that ignited the Dutch Tulip Mania of the 1630s, not the speculative frenzy usually blamed. They walk through the bulb's origin, the economics of s...

In this episode, Lucas and Luna explore the economic revolution sparked by the 1908 introduction of the Ford Model T. They focus on how Henry Ford's assembly line and the $5 wage transformed labor markets, created mass consumption, and reshaped American industrial policy. The episode anchors on specific numbers: the $850 initial price, the 15 million cars produced over 19 years, and the wage hike...

In 1875, the U.S. Congress passed the Specie Resumption Act, a bold plan to return the dollar to the gold standard after the Civil War greenback experiment. But the road to resumption was anything but smooth: it triggered a bitter political battle, a deflationary crisis, and a populist uprising that nearly broke the country. In this episode, Lucas and Luna trace the economics of that forgotten law...

In 1923, Germany's hyperinflation reached a point where a loaf of bread cost 200 billion marks. But beyond the staggering numbers, this episode digs into how ordinary people actually coped day to day: the barter networks, the foreign-currency black markets, the pensioners who lost everything. We look at one specific household account from a Berlin teacher named Klara and trace how her savings vani...

Episode 95 of The Economic History Podcast revisits the Panic of 1837, America's first major depression, through the spectacular collapse of merchant-prince John Jacob Astor. Lucas and Luna trace how a land bubble fueled by loose credit from the Second Bank of the United States, combined with President Andrew Jackson's Specie Circular requiring gold or silver for federal land purchases, triggered...

Lucas and Luna explore the 1772 credit crisis, a financial panic that nearly collapsed the British East India Company and reshaped global trade. They trace how a Scottish banker's failure in June 1772 triggered a chain reaction from London to the American colonies, forcing the Bank of England to intervene and leading to the Tea Act of 1773. Along the way, they unpack the role of credit expansion,...

In 1961, 1,200 workers at Continental Baking's Twinkie plant in Schiller Park, Illinois, walked out over a 2.5-cent wage disparity. The strike lasted 46 days, drew national media attention, and eventually forced the company to bargain collectively. But the real story is how the walkout intersected with the Landrum-Griffin Act, passed just two years earlier, which had restricted union secondary boy...

In 1938, the Pacific sardine fishery off Monterey, California — then the largest fishery in the Western Hemisphere — suddenly collapsed, catching fishermen, canners, and economists off guard. This episode of The Economic History Podcast with Fexingo examines the boom years of the 1920s and 1930s, when sardines seemed inexhaustible and the industry grew into a multi-million-dollar enterprise. We tr...

In this episode of The Economic History Podcast, Lucas and Luna explore the Long Depression of 1873, a global downturn triggered by the collapse of Jay Cooke & Company, the largest bank in the United States at the time. They examine how railroad overbuilding, speculative lending, and a rigid gold standard turned a bank failure into a six-year depression. The episode focuses on the specific moment...

On October 19, 1987, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 22.6 percent in a single day — a larger percentage drop than any single day in 1929. The culprit wasn't a bank run or a foreign shock. It was a computer-driven trading strategy called portfolio insurance that worked perfectly in theory and nearly destroyed the market in practice. This episode examines how a mathematical hedging model, desi...

This episode explores the short-lived but legendary Pony Express, which operated for just 18 months from April 1860 to October 1861. We dig into the specific economics: a $100,000 investment (roughly $3 million today), fares starting at $5 per half-ounce (astronomical for the era), and a business model that lost money on every letter carried. Lucas and Luna discuss why the venture made sense given...

On July 24, 1959, Vice President Richard Nixon and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev stood in a model kitchen at the American National Exhibition in Moscow and argued about washing machines. The so-called 'Kitchen Debate' wasn't just a propaganda stunt — it revealed deep divisions in how each superpower measured economic success. This episode unpacks why the debate focused on consumer appliances ra...

In October 1973, Arab members of OPEC imposed an oil embargo against the United States and other nations supporting Israel in the Yom Kippur War. By the time the embargo ended in March 1974, crude prices had quadrupled from $3 to nearly $12 per barrel. This episode explores how the embargo triggered stagflation, forced the creation of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, accelerated energy efficiency...

In August 1929, just two months before the stock market crash, 35,000 New York City taxi drivers walked off the job. They weren't fighting over wages—they were fighting over the medallion system that would define urban transportation for a century. This episode unpacks the strike's demands, the violent police response, and how the 1929 taxi strike foreshadowed the gig economy debates of the 2020s....

In this episode of The Economic History Podcast, Lucas and Luna dive into the Panic of 1825 — the first modern financial crisis driven by a speculative bubble in Latin American mining stocks and a credit expansion from the Bank of England. They explore how this panic, which brought down hundreds of banks and exposed the fragility of the young joint-stock banking system, laid the groundwork for our...

Episode 84 of The Economic History Podcast with Fexingo: Past Recessions, Booms, and Lessons from History dives into the 1944 Bretton Woods conference and the dollar-gold system it created. Lucas and Luna explore why an arrangement designed to stabilise global currencies for a generation collapsed in just 27 years. They focus on the 'Triffin dilemma' — the fatal flaw Belgian economist Robert Triff...

In January 1914, Henry Ford announced he would pay his factory workers $5 per day — more than double the prevailing wage. Critics called it reckless; within two years, Ford's profits surged and turnover collapsed. This episode unpacks the economics behind one of the most famous labor experiments in history: how a wage hike reshaped productivity, consumption, and the very idea of what a company owe...

When the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1 in October 1957, the US economy was already in recession. The satellite's beep from orbit did more than embarrass American engineers—it triggered a massive government spending shift that reshaped R&D funding, university research, and the human capital pipeline for decades. Lucas and Luna examine how the National Defense Education Act of 1958 poured a billio...

In this episode of The Economic History Podcast, Lucas and Luna explore the 1910 Amazon rubber boom—a speculative frenzy that turned a remote jungle commodity into the engine of Brazil's economy and then collapsed when British plantations in Southeast Asia broke the monopoly. They trace how Manaus became one of the world's richest cities, complete with opulent opera houses and electric streetlight...

In 1816, a massive volcanic eruption in Indonesia triggered global climate disruption, leading to crop failures, food riots, and a severe economic depression across Europe and North America. Lucas and Luna explore how the 'Year Without a Summer' devastated agricultural economies, sparked mass migration from New England to the Midwest, and indirectly influenced early monetary policy debates. They e...