Jeff Reichenberger writes:

INTERVIEWER: As you flip through the book, there are allkinds of terms defined that one would expect. But there are also some surprising terms. I'mgoing to ask you to read the first one because I'm sure I would mispronounce it.

LANCHESTER: I don't know how to pronounce it either. I'm going to take a wild guess.

(Reading) Jachymov. I bet you've indirectly referred to this place in the Czech Republic atsome point in the last week. If you're interested in money, you will certainly have used it atsome point in the last day, maybe even in the last hour. How so? Can you guess? Give up? Well, theBohemian town of Jachymov is known in German as Joachimsthal.

Does that help? It was the site of a famous silver mine, a town that grew tenfold in populationbetween 1516 to 1526 as it became the center of a boom based on the manufacture of a silver coinknown as joachimsthaler. It in time became known tolar or thaler.

The coins were a standard size and form of currency throughout most of Europe for 400 years. Andit's from this ubiquity that we get the word dollar. So every time a dollar is mentioned,someone is unknowingly citing this otherwise obscure spot in rural Bohemia.

INTERVIEWER: So there's a term that I think might not help me read the Financial Times. Butyou clearly take great delight in unearthing this connection.

LANCHESTER: There's this - one of the threads in the book has to do with the oddness ofmoney. You know, a thing that makes people go slightly nuts is when they start thinking about wheredoes money come from? Where does its value come from? Why is it worth what it's worth?

Especially when it's digital ones and zeros, dots on the screen that seem so fragile, theyseem fictional. We seem to have willed their meaning to being. And yet, the meanings are soconsequential it shapes the texture of everyday life. So I'm very interested in that thing withthe materiality of money.

When you can trace money back to actual stuff, it's dug out of a hole in the ground,somebody stamps an image on it, people agree what that coin with the image is worth, and then youtrade with it.

And I like tracing money from those very first roots all the way through to this astonishingvirtual - things like, you know, Bitcoin and things like that that also feature in the book.

To read the complete article, see:
Deciphering The 'Priestly Mumbo-Jumbo' Of The Financial World(www.npr.org/2014/10/05/353515389/deciphering-the-priestly-mumbo-jumbo-of-the-financial-world)