Speaker 1: You're listening to part Time Genius, the production of Kaleidoscope
Speaker 1: and iHeartRadio. Yuess what, well, what's that mango? Do you
Speaker 1: know that people in medieval England used to pay their
Speaker 1: rent with eels? I don't know why anyone would want
Speaker 1: multiple eels, much less accept them as a form of payment.
Speaker 2: What is this all about?
Speaker 1: Well, this was back before coins were widely available, when
Speaker 1: most people just settle their debts with in kind payments.
Speaker 1: They usually traded things like eggs or corn or ale,
Speaker 1: but one of the most highly prized tender was smoked eels,
Speaker 1: and the long snakelike fish was super plentiful in British
Speaker 1: rivers back then, so for a stretch of about five
Speaker 1: hundred years they were caught and traded as makeshift currency,
Speaker 1: and in fact, by the end of the eleventh century,
Speaker 1: more than half a million eels were being paid as
Speaker 1: rent in England each year, specifically and rent so that
Speaker 1: you get the first.
Speaker 3: Of the month and you could just send your landlord
Speaker 3: a sack of dead eels and they wouldn't kick you
Speaker 3: out of your place.
Speaker 1: More than that, they would be thrilled about it, because
Speaker 1: eels were a tasty and nutritious food source, and they
Speaker 1: were especially nice to have on hand during Lent, which
Speaker 1: is when practicing Catholics would abstained from eating meat. But
Speaker 1: if a landlord didn't want to eat all of their earnings,
Speaker 1: they could always just use the eels to pay their
Speaker 1: own debts instead, and the fish were desirable enough that
Speaker 1: just about anyone would accept them as payment.
Speaker 3: I do imagine the turnaround time has to be pretty
Speaker 3: quick on these, right, Like, I'm not sure what the
Speaker 3: shelf life is for eel.
Speaker 1: I mean that is true, but in most cases the
Speaker 1: fish would be salted and smoked and dried so that
Speaker 1: they could be swapped around and stored more easily, and
Speaker 1: for added portability, they were typically tied together into bundles
Speaker 1: of sticks or twenty five eels apiece.
Speaker 3: You know, this really does feel like one of those
Speaker 3: that's just too weird to be true.
Speaker 1: I mean, Gabe showed me all kinds of written records
Speaker 1: to back it up. For example, one of the highest
Speaker 1: eel rents that we know came from the village of
Speaker 1: Harmston in Lincolnshire, and according to the town ledger, the
Speaker 1: residents owed the Earl Hugh of Chester seventy five thousand
Speaker 1: eels per year for use of his land.
Speaker 3: It's a lot of eels where I don't know, maybe not,
Speaker 3: I don't really have a reference point.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it feels like one eel is too many eels
Speaker 1: to me. But I love the idea of briefcases full
Speaker 1: of eels that you're just dropping on your landlord store.
Speaker 1: You know, we were trying to figure out the conversion
Speaker 1: rate for something like this, like how much was a
Speaker 1: single eel or a stick of eels worth? There is
Speaker 1: no way to know for certain, but the lead historian
Speaker 1: on eel rents his name is doctor John Wyatt Greenley.
Speaker 1: He came up with a pretty solid guests and based
Speaker 1: on the numbers found in medieval ledgers, he worked out
Speaker 1: that a single eel would be worth about forty three
Speaker 1: to eighty five cents in today's money. So if the
Speaker 1: upper end of that range, then the residents of Harmston
Speaker 1: were paying about sixty three grand in eel rent per year,
Speaker 1: which isn't too bad for an entire village.
Speaker 3: I guess, I guess until you think about all the
Speaker 3: work that had to go into harvesting and curing seventy
Speaker 3: five thousand eels, Like that's a lot of extra labor
Speaker 3: on top of your actual day job.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, it's kind of amazing the system held out
Speaker 1: as long as it did. Eel rents remained commonplace until
Speaker 1: the fourteenth century or so. But it wasn't the hassle
Speaker 1: of sourcing them that finally killed the practice. It was
Speaker 1: the bubonic plague. So after England's population was decimated in
Speaker 1: the mid thirteen hundreds, much of the empty farmland was
Speaker 1: repurposed for raising livestock, and once red meat became more
Speaker 1: widely available, the demand for eels fell and disappeared almost
Speaker 1: completely by the year fifteen hundred. But that's just the
Speaker 1: first of nine strange stories we're sharing today, all plucked
Speaker 1: from the debt ledgers of history. Let's dive in.
Speaker 3: Hey, their podcast listeners, welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm
Speaker 3: Will Pearson and as always I'm joined by my good
Speaker 3: friend Mangesh Ticketter. And on the other side of that
Speaker 3: soundproof glass wearing a green visor.
Speaker 2: And this is a beautiful green visor.
Speaker 3: Cranking away on an antique adding machine. That's our friend
Speaker 3: and producer Dylan Fagan. Now I don't know what kinds
Speaker 3: of numbers he's crunching over there, but he is crunching
Speaker 3: them up fast.
Speaker 1: Mega, moving so fast. I think he's just pushing random buttons.
Speaker 3: I think so, but he looks like he knows what
Speaker 3: he's doing. But all right, Well, since today's episode is
Speaker 3: all about the history of debt, I thought it'd be
Speaker 3: fun to trace the concept back to its source and
Speaker 3: find out where and when the first debt was actually
Speaker 3: racked up.
Speaker 1: I love it, so did you figure it out?
Speaker 2: I did not.
Speaker 3: So it turns out there's just no way to pinpoint
Speaker 3: it with any real degree of accuracy. And that's because
Speaker 3: debt is as old as history itself. So as soon
Speaker 3: as humans began putting pen to paper or wedge to tablet, like,
Speaker 3: we started keeping track of things like storehouse inventories or
Speaker 3: bills of sale private loans. Even in fact, the earliest
Speaker 3: known examples of writing come from Mesopotamia. This was about
Speaker 3: five thousand years ago, and they aren't works of poetry
Speaker 3: or fiction.
Speaker 2: They're actually bookkeeping.
Speaker 1: Which is not nearly as romantic as it feels like it.
Speaker 2: H It doesn't.
Speaker 3: But you know, there is surprisingly a sweet side to this,
Speaker 3: because these tablets didn't just log the accumulation of debts.
Speaker 3: They also tracked its cancelation. So there's evidence of wide
Speaker 3: scale debt cancelations in Mesopotamia as far back as twenty
Speaker 3: four hundred BCE, and the practice continued there periodically for
Speaker 3: about a thousand years.
Speaker 1: So what kind of debt was being canceled? Like, is
Speaker 1: this private debt? Is it national debt?
Speaker 3: Well, actually, the concept of national debt or public debt
Speaker 3: is is really much more of a modern invention than
Speaker 3: you might think.
Speaker 2: So in the ancient.
Speaker 3: World, all debt was private debt and this is how
Speaker 3: it worked. So in agrarian societies, the state would provide
Speaker 3: the peasantry with farmland, tools, livestock, and of course water
Speaker 3: for irrigation, and at harvest time a portion of the
Speaker 3: food they produced would be paid to the state as rent. Unfortunately,
Speaker 3: when a harvest was worse than expected, the peasants had
Speaker 3: to secure private loans from the upper class in order
Speaker 3: to feed themselves and pay the state what they owed,
Speaker 3: which of course led to an accumulation of debt, and
Speaker 3: if the borrower wasn't able to pay it off in time,
Speaker 3: then either they or their family members would be enslaved
Speaker 3: by their creditors. Now, obviously this wasn't a great system,
Speaker 3: because over time, more and more people were becoming slaves
Speaker 3: to their fellow citizens.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which is not a great recipe for a healthy society.
Speaker 2: Not so much.
Speaker 3: And that's why it became customary for the state to
Speaker 3: wipe the slate clean every few years. This typically happened
Speaker 3: during a big public festival in the springtime. The sitting
Speaker 3: sovereign would proclaim that everyone's debt was erased, and any
Speaker 3: peasants who had been enslaved for unpaid bills were restored
Speaker 3: their full citizenship.
Speaker 1: That's pretty amazing, But it sounds like this was a
Speaker 1: kind of a cyclical process, right, so after a few
Speaker 1: more lean harvests, a peasant might find themselves right back
Speaker 1: in bondage again.
Speaker 2: That's exactly right.
Speaker 3: And it's clear from that on again, off again approach
Speaker 3: that the rulers of Mesopotamia didn't oppose the practice on
Speaker 3: moral grounds. The cancelations were actually away for them to
Speaker 3: keep the peace and preserve the status quote, you know,
Speaker 3: so that society wouldn't break down altogether. And on that count,
Speaker 3: the debt cancelation system actually worked remarkably well, so well
Speaker 3: in fact, that it was eventually adopted by neighboring kingdoms,
Speaker 3: so you're thinking about places like Assyria, Egypt, Jerusalem, and
Speaker 3: Debt cancelation even became a core component of the Jewish
Speaker 3: faith as well as early Christianity. For instance, the Book
Speaker 3: of Leviticus calls on Christians to hold a quote year
Speaker 3: of jubilee every half century.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 3: This occasion is meant to correct any economic inequalities that
Speaker 3: may have arisen over the years, wiping out long standing debts.
Speaker 2: And offering families a fresh dart.
Speaker 1: It's wild to think that was like such a common
Speaker 1: practice in the ancient world, because it it feels like
Speaker 1: such a difficult thing to push through today, like whenever
Speaker 1: we talk about canceling college loans or things like that,
Speaker 1: there's often so much political pushback.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, for sure, And I haven't seen on anybody's
Speaker 3: calendar a year of jubilee coming up. But it actually
Speaker 3: might be the perfect time to try it again, because
Speaker 3: according to a papal bull instituted by the late Pope Francis,
Speaker 3: the next jubilee year should.
Speaker 2: Be twenty twenty five, which is right now.
Speaker 1: I feel like my bank must have missed the memo
Speaker 1: on this, but I am glad you brought up debt
Speaker 1: forgiveness because there's at least one person who's taking the
Speaker 1: Jubilee year to heart, and that is Welsh actor Michael Sheen.
Speaker 2: I did not see that one coming.
Speaker 3: So he's the guy who plays Tony Blair and all
Speaker 3: those British docu dramas, right.
Speaker 1: Uh huh. And he's also played the broadcaster David Frost
Speaker 1: a few times too. But he's not keeping all that
Speaker 1: Blair Frost money to himself because earlier this year she
Speaker 1: used his earnings to write off the debt of nearly
Speaker 1: nine hundred people in his hometown of Port Talbot, Wales.
Speaker 1: And this is actually a story that our good friend
Speaker 1: Simon Brewe told me about. But the decline of the
Speaker 1: city's steel industry had left many residents struggling for years,
Speaker 1: you know, just to make ends meet, and after learning
Speaker 1: that many of his former neighbors were deep in debt
Speaker 1: as a result of this, Sheen decided to lend a
Speaker 1: hand by buying up a million pounds of their collective debt,
Speaker 1: which he then canceled.
Speaker 3: So the million pounds actually came out of his own pocket. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but he definitely used his own money. That said, he
Speaker 3: didn't actually have to pay the full million, because by
Speaker 3: the time she stepped in, many of the residents' debt
Speaker 3: had been bundled together by creditors and sold off to
Speaker 3: debt buying companies, and this often happens at the lower price.
Speaker 3: So after a lengthy process, the actor was able to
Speaker 3: set up his own debt buying company, and then he
Speaker 3: acquired Port Talbot's debt for one tenth of its actual value.
Speaker 3: All right, so he paid one hundred thousand pounds for
Speaker 3: a million pounds worth of debt.
Speaker 2: How does that actually work?
Speaker 1: So I yues. The other debt buying companies didn't think
Speaker 1: there was much of a chance of anyone actually collecting
Speaker 1: on that debt, so they were willing to sell the
Speaker 1: rights for a much smaller lump sum. And in most cases,
Speaker 1: the residents would have still been on the hook for
Speaker 1: the full amount they owed, but thanks to Sheen's generosity,
Speaker 1: now they don't have to pay back a single pound.
Speaker 2: That is pretty amazing.
Speaker 1: That's really sweet. And if any listeners want to learn
Speaker 1: more about Sheen's experience and his motivations for doing this
Speaker 1: whole thing, Channel four produced a documentary chronicling the whole campaign.
Speaker 1: It is called Michael Sheen's Secret Million pound Giveaway, and
Speaker 1: the show makes the case for reforming the UK's credit
Speaker 1: industries so low income families won't have to resort to
Speaker 1: high interest payday loans.
Speaker 3: All right, Well, jumping back a bit further in time,
Speaker 3: the next fact is about a guy who also paid
Speaker 3: off somebody else's hefty debts, but in this case the
Speaker 3: tab belonged to the US government. So this was back
Speaker 3: in seventeen ninety five, about twelve years after the American Revolution,
Speaker 3: and despite Alexander Hamilton's best effort, the nation was struggling
Speaker 3: to pay off loans that it had taken from European
Speaker 3: allies during the war. Now, the debt totaled over two
Speaker 3: million dollars, which is more than fifty one and a
Speaker 3: half million dollars in today's money. And even though we
Speaker 3: owed all that money, the US was actually trying to
Speaker 3: negotiate new loans along the way, which wasn't going over
Speaker 3: that well with everybody in Europe. But that's where a
Speaker 3: man named James Swan came in. So in seventeen ninety five,
Speaker 3: the Scottish American banker used his own money to privately
Speaker 3: assume the entire two million dollar debt that we owed
Speaker 3: the French. This was hailed by many as a patriotic gesture,
Speaker 3: and Swan was indeed a patriot. He actually took part
Speaker 3: in the Boston Tea Party, was wounded not once but
Speaker 3: twice at the Battle of Bunker Hill. But taking over
Speaker 3: the national debt wasn't a completely selfless act on his part.
Speaker 3: In fact, he actually managed to turn a tidy profit
Speaker 3: from it.
Speaker 1: So he didn't go full Michael Sheen and cancel everyone's dead.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, he definitely didn't do that.
Speaker 3: Instead, Swan resold America's debts at a profit to domestic
Speaker 3: private investors. This meant that the US still had to
Speaker 3: pay back the money eventually, but at least we didn't
Speaker 3: owe it to foreign governments, and so Swan's payoff helped
Speaker 3: the young nations say face on the world stage, also
Speaker 3: convinced other countries that it was safe to keep lending
Speaker 3: the US money.
Speaker 1: That's pretty incredible, And it's strange to think about a
Speaker 1: banker bailing out the US government instead of the other
Speaker 1: way around, right, right, right, Yeah, it's not typically the
Speaker 1: way that goes. But all right, we've got five more
Speaker 1: debt ridden stories left to share, but first let's take
Speaker 1: a quick break. Welcome back to Part Time Genius, where
Speaker 1: we're exploring the lighter side of one of humanity's first
Speaker 1: and worst inventions, financial debt. Now, before the break, will
Speaker 1: you mentioned that James Swan had participated in the Boston
Speaker 1: Tea party raid switch, if you'll recall, didn't result in
Speaker 1: any debts or serious injuries, But that doesn't mean there
Speaker 1: weren't victims. So the British tea merchants whose ships were
Speaker 1: raided lost a fortune in merchandise, and amazingly, one of
Speaker 1: those companies, Davison Newman, is still trying to recoup with
Speaker 1: losses today.
Speaker 2: And like, who are.
Speaker 3: They trying to recoup this from? Like are they shaking
Speaker 3: down the partygoer's descendants or what?
Speaker 1: No shakedowns, but they are accepting donations. So back in
Speaker 1: seventeen seventy four, sixteen chests of tea belonging to the
Speaker 1: Davison Newman company were chucked into the water during the
Speaker 1: Boston Tea Party and while the company's founders petitioned King
Speaker 1: George to reimburse them for its value, which was four
Speaker 1: hundred and eighty British pounds. The Crown actually declined to
Speaker 1: pay that. They ended up losing more tea in other raids,
Speaker 1: and appeals for those claims were also rejected. And that's
Speaker 1: how it went on for seven generations of the company
Speaker 1: until finally, in nineteen sixty one, the residents of Jackson County, Oregon,
Speaker 1: decided to make amends.
Speaker 2: Wait, Oregon.
Speaker 3: Last time I checked, it was nowhere near Boston. So
Speaker 3: what did they have to do with the Boston Tea Party?
Speaker 1: Nothing? Apparently it still was weighing on their consciences. This
Speaker 1: woman named missus Burt Free. In nineteen sixty one, she
Speaker 1: spearheaded a local campaign to pay back her county's fair
Speaker 1: share of the company's losses. After adjusting for inflation, they
Speaker 1: determined that the long lost shipment was worth just under
Speaker 1: five thousand dollars, So they divided that number by the
Speaker 1: then current population of the United States and calculated the
Speaker 1: portionate share owed by residents of Jackson County, which was
Speaker 1: like what five dollars or a dollar ninety six? So
Speaker 1: the money was contributed by seventeen residents and was delivered
Speaker 1: as a check along with the letter of explanation from
Speaker 1: the mayor of the largest city in Jackson County.
Speaker 2: That is such a ridiculous amount.
Speaker 3: It actually reminds me of the scene from The Jerk
Speaker 3: where Steve Martin's having to sign the checks for the
Speaker 3: class action lawsuit her life four dollars and twelve cents
Speaker 3: or whatever it was. But it is such a ridiculous amount,
Speaker 3: like it almost feels like an insult. But do we
Speaker 3: know what Davison Newman thought of all this?
Speaker 1: Well, they apparently appreciated the gesture because a spokesman accepted
Speaker 1: the check in person. His name was Leslie Simons, and
Speaker 1: he said the company hoped this would be the first
Speaker 1: of many SUSH payments. The last yeah quote, the government
Speaker 1: never gave us a peep. Bostonians simply smiled. But Jackson County,
Speaker 1: oh they are fine folk. Now we are waiting to
Speaker 1: hear from the rest of Oregon's counties and from the
Speaker 1: other forty nine states, right right, right?
Speaker 2: So did actually anything come from all the waiting?
Speaker 1: Nope, the company hasn't received another direct payment from the public,
Speaker 1: and you know, I don't think they're really expecting to
Speaker 1: write oh.
Speaker 3: Wow, which makes that bug ninety from Oregon just so
Speaker 3: much sweeter.
Speaker 2: That's pretty wild, all right.
Speaker 3: Okay, speaking of long standing debts, did you know that
Speaker 3: Finland is the only country to fully pay back its debts.
Speaker 2: From World War One? Did you know that? Did you
Speaker 2: have your listen?
Speaker 3: Really, most of your borrowed money from the US during
Speaker 3: the war, but by the time the first payments came
Speaker 3: due in the nineteen twenties, most of them were actually
Speaker 3: still too cash strapped to afford it. Now, this situation
Speaker 3: only worsened with the onset of the Great Depression. So finally,
Speaker 3: in nineteen thirty one, President Hoover granted a moratorium on
Speaker 3: the collection of war debt. This postponement was only meant
Speaker 3: to last a year, but European borrowers treated it like
Speaker 3: a permanent pardon, so much so that when the repayments
Speaker 3: were scheduled to resume in nineteen thirty three, only a
Speaker 3: single country cut the US.
Speaker 2: A check, and that was, of course Finland.
Speaker 3: Now, the country continued to make regular payments until nineteen
Speaker 3: seventy six, when its loan was paid in full, and
Speaker 3: that was right on schedule.
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess it's cool that they paid us back,
Speaker 1: But did Finland just not know that everyone else had
Speaker 1: stopped paying or what.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was wondering the same thing.
Speaker 3: But you know, they didn't do it by accident or
Speaker 3: even out of a sense of moral obligation. Instead, it
Speaker 3: was actually part of an effort to improve Finland's reputation.
Speaker 2: As a reliable debtor.
Speaker 3: Now the country had earned a bad reputation in the
Speaker 3: nineteen twenty after borrowing a large sum of gold from France,
Speaker 3: only to pay it back with devalued Finnish currency. Now,
Speaker 3: the French wound up losing money on the deal, and
Speaker 3: the international markets took notice, so Finland's foreign ministry actually
Speaker 3: had to go into damage control here. Now they knew
Speaker 3: that other European countries had no intention of resuming payments,
Speaker 3: and since Finland's debt to the US was a fairly
Speaker 3: small percentage of its annual GDP, they decided it was
Speaker 3: a good idea to just go ahead and pay up
Speaker 3: in the hopes of scoring some good press.
Speaker 1: And did it work.
Speaker 3: It actually worked really, really well, So between nineteen thirty
Speaker 3: three and nineteen thirty six, nearly three thousand stories were
Speaker 3: published in American newspapers, all of them praising Finland for
Speaker 3: paying its due when no one else would So one
Speaker 3: of my favorites is this nineteen thirty five piece from
Speaker 3: the Indianapolis Times, and it says, quote, on December fifteenth,
Speaker 3: Finland will pay her semi annual war debt installment of
Speaker 3: about a quarter of a million dollars. It's sure nice
Speaker 3: to think one nation will drop a remembrance in the
Speaker 3: lean old sock this year. Now on our best finish,
Speaker 3: we wish for a merry Christmas housekoo yalua.
Speaker 2: I said it just right, Ma, didn't I love it?
Speaker 1: Nailed it?
Speaker 2: You didn't know I spoke Finnish.
Speaker 1: I did not know that. But I'm guessing after that
Speaker 1: Finland could borrow money from whoever they wanted, right.
Speaker 3: I mean pretty much. The pr campaign works so well
Speaker 3: that a fact about Finland's reliability was written into American textbooks,
Speaker 3: and decades later, many people still refer to Finland as
Speaker 3: the country that pays its debts.
Speaker 1: So the Finish are basically the Lanisters of the EU,
Speaker 1: that's right.
Speaker 3: I mean, I don't think they'll get along quite so
Speaker 3: well with their siblings, but otherwise sure.
Speaker 1: Well, here's another story of a debt repayment, or at
Speaker 1: least a partial one. So do you remember the early
Speaker 1: nineties when Willie Nelson owed the IRS like tens of
Speaker 1: millions of dollars in unpaid taxes.
Speaker 3: And they I think they like raided his house for
Speaker 3: something too, right, Yeah, it was worse than that.
Speaker 1: So the IRS actually seized Nelson's property in six different
Speaker 1: states on the same day, and the federal agents who
Speaker 1: raided his primary home in Austin, Texas also stock thousands
Speaker 1: of his personal belongings, including instruments, master recordings, studio equipment,
Speaker 1: and the idea was to sell the items at auction
Speaker 1: to help settle the singer's enormous tax bill, but things
Speaker 1: didn't quite go as planned. So Willie had seen the
Speaker 1: writing on the wall ahead of the raid and made
Speaker 1: sure he was away golfing in Hawaii when the IRS
Speaker 1: agents arrived.
Speaker 3: Wait, Willie Nelson played golf. I didn't know that. That's
Speaker 3: almost episode. This episode needs to go in a different
Speaker 3: direction now.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Anyway, when he was golfing, he also had his daughter
Speaker 1: remove his favorite guitar from his Texas home and chip
Speaker 1: it to him and Maui for safekeeping. And at the
Speaker 1: time he told the press, as long as I got
Speaker 1: my guitar, I'll be fine. But he didn't know how
Speaker 1: right he was, because not only did he get to
Speaker 1: keep his beloved guitar, he also got back most of
Speaker 1: his other stuff. The IRS held several public auctions in
Speaker 1: Texas to sell off his property, but they didn't make
Speaker 1: nearly as much money as expected because most Texans were
Speaker 1: fused to bid out of respect for Willie Nelson, and
Speaker 1: although his branch did sell, the bidder turned out to
Speaker 1: be a fan who gave the property right back to Willie,
Speaker 1: which I'm sure the IRS just love.
Speaker 2: To see, right, Yeah, not so much.
Speaker 1: But the agents realized the auctions were getting them nowhere,
Speaker 1: so they sold off his remaining items as a lot
Speaker 1: price that just seven thousand dollars. This meant that the
Speaker 1: bulk of the debt was still unpaid, so in nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety one, the IRS worked out an unusual deal. Nelson
Speaker 1: agreed to record a two disc compilation album, with part
Speaker 1: of the proceeds going toward what he still owed, and
Speaker 1: to keep recording costs as low as possible, he decided
Speaker 1: to record stripped down acoustic versions of some of his
Speaker 1: pre existing songs, plus a few new ones. The album
Speaker 1: was called Quote the Irs Tapes, Who Will buy My
Speaker 1: Memories question Mark, and it featured titles like remember the
Speaker 1: Good Times and what can You Do to Me Now?
Speaker 2: Wow? Okay.
Speaker 1: It was released in December of nineteen ninety two and
Speaker 1: eventually chipped away at about three point six million dollars
Speaker 1: of Willie's tax debt, which you know, still wasn't anywhere
Speaker 1: close to what he owed. His full tab was closer
Speaker 1: to thirty two million dollars after taxes and penalties. But
Speaker 1: I think the IRS was sick of chasing him by
Speaker 1: that point, because after he made a few more payments,
Speaker 1: the agency retired his remaining debt in nineteen ninety three.
Speaker 3: I mean, Willie Nelson's great in all, but I'm not
Speaker 3: sure how fair this whole thing feels like you don't
Speaker 3: hear about the IRS retiring.
Speaker 2: The debt of many non Grammy winners.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and Willy obviously knew he'd gone off light, because
Speaker 1: two years later, in an interview with Rolling Stone, he said,
Speaker 1: quote mentally, it.
Speaker 2: Was a breeze.
Speaker 1: They didn't bother me. They didn't come out and confiscate
Speaker 1: anything other than that first day, and they didn't show
Speaker 1: up at every gig and demand money. I appreciated that
Speaker 1: and then we teamed up and put out a record.
Speaker 3: It's nice to know there were no hard feelings in
Speaker 3: the end. All right, Well, here's a story about one
Speaker 3: of the most unjust and contentious debt repayments of all time. Ango, oh,
Speaker 3: I'm excited to it's it's pretty much a doozy. So
Speaker 3: I'm sure you're aware of that Haiti among the poorest
Speaker 3: nations in the world. But did you know that's partly
Speaker 3: because it was forced to pay an exorbitant independence debt
Speaker 3: And this was to France.
Speaker 1: So I vaguely remember this. I think the Times did
Speaker 1: a piece on this a while back, but it had
Speaker 1: to do with like the revolution.
Speaker 2: Right sort of.
Speaker 3: So back in eighteen oh four, the enslaved Haitians defeated
Speaker 3: their French oppressors and claimed independence. But two decades later,
Speaker 3: France came back with a fleet of warships and demanded
Speaker 3: that Haiti pay one hundred and fifty million francs to
Speaker 3: officially purchase the territory. Now, they basically forced Haitians to
Speaker 3: choose between crippling debt or another war, and the price
Speaker 3: the French king demanded made it crystal clear that he
Speaker 3: was just doing this out of pure racist spite.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: So Haiti's only about ten thousand square miles, which is
Speaker 3: roughly the size of the state of Maryland. Yet France
Speaker 3: wanted ten times the amount it had charged the US
Speaker 3: for the entire Louisiana purchase, which if you remember, pretty
Speaker 3: much doubled the size of the US at that point.
Speaker 1: That's really horrible. So how did the Haitians respet onto this?
Speaker 3: I mean, they didn't really have much of a choice here,
Speaker 3: so they were still finding their footing as an independent nation,
Speaker 3: didn't have the resources to fight a second revolution. But
Speaker 3: that also meant the country couldn't afford to pay France's
Speaker 3: ridiculous price upfront. So to add insult to injury, Haiti
Speaker 3: wound up taking out loans with these sky high interest
Speaker 3: rates from of course, a French bank, and it took
Speaker 3: Haiti one hundred and twenty two years to pay off
Speaker 3: the debt, which at final tally was somewhere between twenty
Speaker 3: and thirty billion dollars in today's money, so an enormous
Speaker 3: summer money.
Speaker 1: It is incredible and horrible. Well, here is a bizarre
Speaker 1: one I just heard about in twenty fourteen, A whole
Speaker 1: mountain of ancient Roman debt was discovered during the construction
Speaker 1: of a Bloomberg office building in London. More than four
Speaker 1: hundred wooden writing tablets were found at the dig site,
Speaker 1: and most of them turned out to be contracts and
Speaker 1: loan notes from the first century CE to.
Speaker 2: Like two thousand year old. IOUs.
Speaker 3: I'm actually surprised the wood was even lessible after all
Speaker 3: that time.
Speaker 2: You know that you said they were underground.
Speaker 1: Yeah. It took archaeologists about two years to translate the
Speaker 1: eighty eight best preserved of these tablets. The slow process
Speaker 1: was partly because the text was written in Latin and
Speaker 1: also incursive, but also because each word had been scratched
Speaker 1: into a wax coated wood with an iron stylist. None
Speaker 1: of this made for the neatest penmanship. But what is
Speaker 1: interesting is that debt records can tell you a lot
Speaker 1: about the people who made them. So for instance, apparently
Speaker 1: Titus of London got duped into lending money to some
Speaker 1: shady characters, and now he is the laughingstock of the marketplace.
Speaker 1: So is that from one of those tablets. But by
Speaker 1: the way, I do love that you're spreading first century
Speaker 1: gossip here. I mean, it's not gossip. It is all
Speaker 1: there in wax and wood. It was plain his day.
Speaker 3: But since you introduced this to Eel Rents and the
Speaker 3: good people of Jackson County, I think you're going to
Speaker 3: win today's trophy.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 3: The only thing is I don't have it with me,
Speaker 3: So if you don't mind, can I can I give
Speaker 3: this to you later? Can I just owe you on
Speaker 3: this one?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Let's say six and a quarter interest the quarterly
Speaker 1: sire Pretty good? Right? Well, that is it for today's episode.
Speaker 1: Thank you for the trophy. We'll be back next week
Speaker 1: with another brand new episode. In the meantime, if you
Speaker 1: enjoy the show, subscribe on your favorite podcast stapp leave
Speaker 1: us a five star rating and interview, and give us
Speaker 1: a call if you have a question or just want
Speaker 1: to say hi. The number is three zero two four
Speaker 1: oh five five nine two five. And actually I just
Speaker 1: want to play you a message we got because it
Speaker 1: really made me smile. Hi.
Speaker 4: This is Christina, the Curator of Fun here in Spokane, Washington.
Speaker 4: I am the owner of the friendliest store in Spokane,
Speaker 4: the Plucky Deck. So I am calling because I am
Speaker 4: a big fan of part time Genius. I have been
Speaker 4: listening to you guys for over five years. I really
Speaker 4: do believe it's right when you first began, and each
Speaker 4: time you come back into my feed, I get so
Speaker 4: so excited. I love your show. Keep up the good work,
Speaker 4: and if I can ever be of service, just let
Speaker 4: me know.
Speaker 3: All right, I think Christina Win's best job title the
Speaker 3: curator of Fun at the Plucky Duck.
Speaker 2: I mean, there's no topping that.
Speaker 1: I know. Every town should have a curator of fun.
Speaker 1: So thank you so much Christina for calling in. We
Speaker 1: love hearing from you all, so please keep them coming.
Speaker 1: And from Dylan Gade, Mary, Will and myself, thank you
Speaker 1: so much for listening. Part Time Genius is a production
Speaker 1: of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio. This show is hosted by Will
Speaker 1: Pearson and me Mongashtikler and research by our good pal
Speaker 1: Mary Philip Sandy. Today's episode was engineered and produced by
Speaker 1: the wonderful Dylan Fagan with support from Tyler Klan. The
Speaker 1: show is executive produced for iHeart by Katrina Norvel and
Speaker 1: Ali Perry, with social media support from Sasha Gate trustee
Speaker 1: Dara Potts and Viney Shore. For more podcasts from Kaleidoscope
Speaker 1: and iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.