26: Between the fold( doc review), the invention of money(podcast review).
Everything in life folds. From proetins to DNA to sound traveling by airwaves. It is almost a fundemental peoperty of life. The doc explores the different artists using paper folding to create all sorts of intricate pieces of arts from sophisticated geometrical shapes to animals figures represented down to the last detail to all sorts of unimagineable shapes. Paper folding or Origami was first popularized by a Japanese veteran who dedicated his life to popularize this art by doing all sorts of impossible shapes by applying wet paper folding. Artists use mathemical configurations to figure out how to fold the paper,others use origami to fight the imposition of power. Origami turns out to have very practical effects in real world, NASA used origami to build a folding solar panels that is released in space, and airbags designer use it to design efficient airbags. It is incredible how these artists spend countless hours trying to perfect a shape using hundreds of fold and the more Origami is spread,the more complex the shapes are getting. That was a cool doc.
2- The invention of money, podcast review
This american life podcast review
Back in the 80s through the 90s, Brazil was going through an increasing inflation and trust in the currency was out of the question. The government tried to impose price freezing laws, but the business owners would hide the stuff they have until prices were up. This failed. The government also tried to print a lot of money,which made things worse, because there is this balancing act between printing enough money to support expanding amd newly open businesses take off and not having excessive amounts to erode the trust in the currency. Money is fiction. Depends on trust. Trust used to be in large coin shaped rocks( one of them under the ocean) and then dollars were measured in gold, and dollars stopped being backed by gold, and inflation starts. Now, in case of brazil, the four horsemen of the apocalypse who rushed to the rescue had a mission of regaining people's trust in their currency, so they invented a fake currency called URV and made it stable in respect to the old currency; no matter the inflation in the old, people were now acting according to a new fictional currency, which, once it has gathered enough impetus, cash in it was printed and circulated as the new, now trusted, national currency. Brazil was saved.
The federal bank has the power to create money out of thin air, by buying treasury bonds and playing with interest rates. Of course it never loses money for it is always doing that in exchange for casflow making assets. Central bank, same thing, can print money and stuff.