'The Invention of Money'

I'm hit and miss with "This American Life" but the recent "The Invention of Money" episode is worth downloading.

Sounds boring but it's not. In "asking the same stoner-ish question: What is money?," host Ira Glass and his team explain the crazy "pre-industrial society on the island of Yap that used giant stones as currency (including one on the bottom of the ocean far from residents), to how Brazilian economists tricked people with a virtual currency to the most recent efforts by the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank to prop up the American economy.

Fascinating breakdown on a subject that drives our daily lives but which most of us have no real grasp of.