9 Crazy Stories About Debt (Including when you could pay your rent in Eels?!)
Part-Time Genius
iHeartPodcasts and Kaleidoscope
4.5 • 2K Ratings
🗓️ 12 August 2025
⏱️ 30 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
What’s more fun than financial debt? Honestly, just about anything! But the team here has a knack for finding the silly side of any subject, and the history of people owing money to each other is no exception. Today, the guys share some out-of-the-box ideas for settling a debt, including paying your rent with a bunch of dead eels (looking at you, medieval England!) and recording an IRS-themed country album (looking at you, Willie Nelson!). They also discover why a small town in Oregon decided to foot the bill for the Boston Tea Party, and reveal which country is the most reliable debtor in the EU (hint, they’re also big into saunas).
Check out Dr. Greenlee’s Eel-Rents Project at historiacartarum.org!
Got a question you’d like us to answer? A rabbit hole you think we should explore? Email higeniuses@gmail.com or leave us a message at (302) 405-5925.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an IHeart podcast. |
| 0:04.1 | If a baby is giggling in the back seat, they're probably happy. |
| 0:08.2 | If a baby is crying in the back seat, they're probably hungry. |
| 0:12.2 | But if a baby is sleeping in the back seat, will you remember they're even there? |
| 0:17.6 | When you're distracted, stressed, or not usually the one who drives them, the chances |
| 0:21.9 | of forgetting them in the back seat are much higher. It can happen to anyone. Parked cars get hot |
| 0:27.6 | fast and can be deadly. So get in the habit of checking the back seat when you leave. The message |
| 0:33.1 | from NHTSA and the Ad Council. |
| 0:58.1 | You're listening to Part-Time Genius, a production of kaleidoscope and IHeartRadio. Guess what will? |
| 0:59.1 | What's that, Mango? |
| 0:59.9 | Do you know that people in medieval England used to pay their rent with eels? |
| 1:03.7 | I don't know why anyone would want multiple eels, much less accept them as a form of payment. |
| 1:08.5 | What is this all about? |
| 1:09.3 | Well, this was back before coins were |
| 1:11.2 | widely available when most people just settled their debts with in-kind payments. They usually |
| 1:16.2 | traded things like eggs or corn or ale, but one of the most highly prized tender was smoked eels. |
| 1:23.8 | And the long snake-like fish was super plentiful in British rivers back then. So for a stretch of |
| 1:29.5 | about 500 years, they were caught and traded as makeshift currency. And in fact, by the end of the |
| 1:35.4 | 11th century, more than half a million eels were being paid as rent in England each year. |
| 1:41.1 | Specifically in rent. So you get the first of the month and you could just send your |
| 1:44.3 | landlord a sack of dead eels and they wouldn't kick you out of your place. More than that, |
| 1:48.0 | they would be thrilled about it because eels were a tasty and nutritious food source and they were |
... |
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