Series ・ 10 parts

The Story of Gold: Humanity's Eternal Obsession

A metal that does not rust, does not decay, and simply keeps on shining. The people of ancient Egypt called it the flesh of the gods and entrusted to it the eternity of their kings. Why does the golden mask of Tutankhamun still draw us in? This first episode traces gold's permanence and humanity's earliest thirst.

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01 The Thirst for Gold — The Metal of Gods and Kings A metal that does not rust, does not decay, and simply keeps on shining. The people of ancient Egypt called it the flesh of the gods and entrusted to it the eternity of their kings. Why does the golden mask of Tutankhamun still draw us in? This first episode traces gold's permanence and humanity's earliest thirst.
02 Gold and Empire — The Gold That Moved the Ancient World Gold, once the metal of the gods, transforms into a currency passed from hand to hand. The cast coins of Lydia, Rome's aureus, and an age when empires tore down whole mountains in search of gold mines. This second episode traces the ancient world in which gold began to move trade and power.
03 The Illusion of El Dorado — The Age of Exploration and New World Gold Dreaming of a golden land beyond the sea, Europe met the gold of the Aztec and the Inca in the New World. The conquests of Cortes and Pizarro, the emperor's ransom, and the countless lives lost in the shadow of plunder. This episode traces the light and shadow of an age driven by the legend of El Dorado, holding to neutrality while noting that the numbers remain disputed.
04 The Tide of Silver — The World Economy and Gold and Silver From the Potosi silver mine found in the Andean highlands, white metal poured out into the world. The silver that flowed into Spain set off a price revolution and was drawn across the Pacific into Ming China. This episode traces, with neutrality, the story of the first global economy woven by the other precious metal that stood alongside gold.
05 The Gold Rush — The Frenzy of Striking It Rich In 1848, a single flake of placer gold found at a sawmill in California drove hundreds of thousands of people westward, ever westward. The forty-niners, Australia, the Klondike. This is a history-based account of an age of frenzy when towns were born overnight and vanished just as fast, told including the pioneering and migration — and the people who fell in its shadow.
06 The Gold Standard — The Age When Gold Ruled the World Backed by the vast quantity of gold the gold rushes had dug up, the 19th-century world was bound together under a single mechanism called the gold standard. Centered on London's gold market, gold became the anchor of international currency, supporting stability and prosperity. Yet within that golden chain lurked a rigidity hard to see. This is a neutral tracing of both its light and its shadow.
07 Prisoners of Gold — The Great Depression and the Gold Seizure Amid the Great Depression that began in 1929, the gold standard that had upheld the world turned into a chain that bound people. At the bottom of deflation, the United States seized its citizens' gold under Executive Order 6102 in 1933, then raised its price the following year. This is the bitter story of gold and the power of the state.
08 The Day the Golden Chain Broke — The End of Bretton Woods After the Second World War, the world retied its currencies around a dollar linked to gold at 35 dollars an ounce. But gold kept flowing out of the United States, and in 1971 President Nixon suspended the exchange of gold for dollars. On the day the golden chain broke, gold was freed from its fixed price and stepped out into the market.
09 The Throne of the Safe Haven — Gold in the Modern Age Once convertibility ended and its price was free to move, gold steadily secured its standing as the safe-haven asset bought in every crisis. Central bank reserves, the new investment vehicle of the gold ETF, and the shadow of mining symbolized by South Africa. This episode calmly traces gold's role in the modern world.
10 The Unchanging Shine — The Future of Gold The gold sleeping in the circuit boards of smartphones, the urban mine of discarded electronics, the environmental burden that mining brings. And why has humanity remained captivated by gold for five thousand years? As the final episode of the series, this quietly traces gold's other face — neither ornament nor investment — and the question it leaves us.