How to understand money stuff (w/ Matt Levine) | from How to Be a Better Human
TED Business
TED
4.0 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 30 March 2026
⏱️ 39 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Matt Levine is the author of Bloomberg’s “Money Stuff” newsletter where he writes about Wall Street and finances. Matt joins Chris to break down common money questions such as what exactly is commodity trading? How do AI companies make money? How do companies balance ethics and virtues with increasing profits for shareholders? They also discuss how Matt uses comedy and humor to make complicated money topics accessible.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hi everyone, it's Madupa here. |
| 0:09.1 | Today we're sharing an episode of a podcast we think you'll love. |
| 0:13.3 | It's been handpicked by the TED staff, and we think that as TED business listeners, you'll come away with a fresh idea and a totally new perspective. |
| 0:22.7 | Enjoy and head to the link in the description for more. |
| 0:30.5 | You're listening to How to Be a Better Human. I am your host, Chris Duffy. |
| 0:34.4 | Today's episode is a bit of a departure for us. We're going to be covering a topic that is a little different than what we normally |
| 0:39.9 | discuss on this show, which is international finance and the global economy. |
| 0:44.4 | Not the typical how to be a better human topic. |
| 0:47.3 | Now, we're going to be talking about the big picture of money stuff, and we're going to |
| 0:50.7 | be talking about that with Matt Levine, the author of the popular financial |
| 0:54.8 | newsletter and podcast that is called appropriately enough, Money Stuff. |
| 0:58.4 | There are a couple of reasons why I really wanted to have Matt on our show. And the first is |
| 1:02.2 | that I enjoy Money Stuff a lot. I think his writing is so funny. Matt makes me laugh. And I learn |
| 1:06.9 | about things that I would have never thought about otherwise. But the bigger reason that I wanted to have Matt on the show is that I think too few of us have a deep understanding of the financial forces at play in our world and society. |
| 1:19.2 | It is such a tiny, tiny percentage of people who actually understand the decisions, motivations, and structural forces that affect businesses and governmental |
| 1:28.4 | policies and our individual financial lives. And yet, money plays an outsized role in how we're |
| 1:34.8 | able to live our lives, how we're able to take care of our friends and families, how we're |
| 1:38.7 | able to make decisions in our community and in our world. If we know more, we can be more |
| 1:43.8 | empowered, more confident, |
| 1:45.0 | and more informed. So I want to know, and I want everyone else to know, the answers to questions |
| 1:50.7 | like, why do prices go up? How and why do banks make money? What even is a dollar or a peso |
| 1:57.6 | or a euro? What do they represent? And what I love about Matt is that he explains |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from TED, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of TED and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.