NPR. The prices of gold and silver are on roller coaster rides. Gold has been rising over the

last few years. Silver shot up like a skyrocket in January. But then both plunged in

price and sputtered around the end of the month. Is somebody hoarding gold bars? Is there a rampant

demand for candelabras? What is going on? This is the indicator from planet money. I'm

Darien Woods. And I'm Adrian Ma. Today on the show, the long and short

history of precious metals. We talk with some traders about what this volatility in gold and silver

is saying about the state of the world. To explain what's happened with gold and silver over the last

month, we spoke with David Kotak.

David co-founded Cumberland Advisors, a money management firm.

And David starts the story in 600 BC, in Lydia, a kingdom that was where modern-day Turkey is now.

Lydia was the first trading country that actually put together a coin that contained gold.

So gold has a history of almost 3,000 years in monetary and finance and trading and payments.

David says gold is both malleable and strong. It could be spread extremely

thinly, even down to the width of a single atom. So it has this solidity, this robustness against

getting destroyed, which is helpful for preserving wealth. And with a bit of heat, it can be subdivided

for payments. Also, there isn't

much of it. If you took all the gold that's ever been mined in the entire world and made one large

cube out of it, it would be about 70 feet by 70 feet by 70 feet.

Another way you might have heard this explained is that you could fit all the gold ever mined into about three Olympic-sized swimming pools, which is not that much when you think about it.

Gold hits this kind of sweet spot for storing wealth.

If it were too rare, too few people would actually

pay to afford any, and not many people would trade it. But if it were too common, it would be

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