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By: Daniel Gamboa Matt Harris
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Episodes
  • Financing the American Revolution: Robert Morris and Independence

    Financing the American Revolution: Robert Morris and Independence
    Jul 1 2026
    You think you know the history of the American Revolution. George Washington crossing the Delaware. Thomas Jefferson writing the Declaration. But there’s one founder you’ve likely never heard of, and he was just as important.The war for independence started and ended on a financial note, and the man at the center of the money problem was someone most of us have never heard of: Robert Morris, the Financier of the American Revolution.Morris was a Liverpool-born merchant who moved to America at thirteen in 1747 and went on to become one of the most important leaders of the American Revolution. He understood shipping, credit, and global trade well enough to keep Washington’s army from collapsing.We trace the arc of the war to understand how a small group of colonies banded together to finance a rebellion against a world superpower. We cover colonial paper money, the fiscal tensions leading up to Lexington and Concord, how the Continental Congress tried to fund everything, and how they ultimately saved the war by handing extraordinary executive powers to Robert Morris.Chapters(05:35) The colonial economy: farming, a chronic trade deficit, and a chronic shortage of gold(08:15) Robert Morris: the Liverpool-born merchant who masters colonial trade(12:50) Money as a flashpoint: the Currency Acts and Morris’s own private currency experiment(17:38) From taxes to revolution: the Stamp Act, the Intolerable Acts, and Lexington and Concord(19:43) Funding a war with no power to tax: Congress invents the Continental Dollar(29:35) Christmas Supplies: Morris helps Washington cross the Delaware(34:02) “Not worth a Continental”: hyperinflation and the collapse of the printing era(44:17) Superintendent of Finance: a desperate Congress hands Morris near-total control(52:13) Yorktown: kegs of French silver and the financing behind the decisive victory(54:47) Newburgh and the Treaty of Paris: the army nearly turns and the war endsReferencesRobert Morris: Financier of the American Revolution by Charles Rappleye (Link)The Continental Dollar: How the American Revolution Was Financed with Paper Money by Fairley Grub (Link)Financial Founding Fathers: The Men Who Made America Rich by by Robert E. Wright and David J. Cowen (Link)Founding Finance: How Debt, Speculation, Foreclosures, Protests, and Crackdowns Made Us a Nation by William Hogeland (Link)One Nation Under Debt by Robert E. Wright (Link)The Power of the Purse by E. James Ferguson (Link)SponsorsBig thanks to EQT Corporation for helping us bring you the stories of market history and how they apply today. To join us in celebrating America’s 250th anniversary, go to https://www.eqt.com/community/america-250.Note: this show is for informational purposes only and isn’t investment advice. Backtest hosts and guests may have investments in the companies discussed. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.backtestpodcast.com
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    1 hr and 6 mins
  • The Rail Revolution: George Hudson and Railway Mania (Part 2)

    The Rail Revolution: George Hudson and Railway Mania (Part 2)
    Jun 8 2026
    In the 1840s, Britain deployed more capital in railways than any nation had ever invested in anything outside of war. At the peak, capital invested was more than 7% of GDP… in a single year. That’s three times what the US is spending on AI today. And almost all of it came, not from governments or great banks, but from the savings of private individuals.At the center of it stood another George. This time, it’s not George Stephenson, the father of locomotives. This time it’s the Railway King, George Hudson, who started as an orphaned draper’s apprentice in York, inherited a fortune at twenty-seven, and use it to dive into politics, to start a bank, and ultimately to build the largest railway empire in Britain, controlling a third of the nation’s track at his height.We follow Hudson’s rise from a single line through York, to the serial mergers that built the Midland Railway, to a seat in Parliament and a place at the epicenter of the mania that he both rode and amplified. Then we trace the unraveling: the Irish famine, the Bank Crisis of 1847, collapsing dividends, and the shareholder meeting in 1849 where a single question started a snowball effect that brought George down. But it didn’t bring down the vast network of railways he built; a network that would go on to underpin the Victorian golden age.Along the way we dig into how this market actually worked (cash calls, parliamentary approval, project dividends), and how, as the mania took off, investors ignored competitive pressures and succumbed to a “collective hallucination”.Chapters(08:00) Intro to George Hudson(10:18) The inheritance(18:15) George Hudson meets George Stephenson and builds the York & North Midland(19:03) How the capital structure of railways actually worked(30:07) The 1844 Midland merger masterstroke(38:32) Railway Mania at its peak(43:12) Conflicts of interest everywhere(46:02) The Bank Crisis of 1847(52:22) The dominoes fall(1:02:14) Takeaways from the storyReferencesGeorge Hudson: The Rise and Fall of the Railway King by AJ Arnold and Sean McCartney (link)George Hudson: The Railway King: A New Biography by Matthew Wells (link)History of Railway Mania by Gareth Campbell (link)Papers on Technology and Financial Manias by Andrew Odlyzko (link)Boom and Bust: A Global History of Financial Bubbles by William Quinn & John Turner (link)Devil Take the Hindmost: A History of Financial Speculation by Edward Chancellor (link)Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital: The Dynamics of Bubbles and Golden Ages by Carlota Perez (link)SponsorsBig thanks to EQT Corporation for helping us bring you the stories of market history and how they apply today. To learn more and explore the latest data on energy affordability, go to eqt.com/energy-affordability.Note: this show is for informational purposes only and isn’t investment advice. Backtest hosts and guests may have investments in the companies discussed. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.backtestpodcast.com
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    1 hr and 7 mins
  • The Rail Revolution: George Stephenson and the Birth of Railways (Part 1)

    The Rail Revolution: George Stephenson and the Birth of Railways (Part 1)
    May 18 2026
    Every so often a technology arrives that changes everything. For over 5,000 years, the fastest a human being or a ton of freight could move overland was the speed of a horse. Then, in the span of a single generation, that constraint was gone.We are living through one of these revolutions right now, sparked by artificial intelligence. When you look at other revolutions in history, nothing quite compares to AI… except for rail.This is the first episode of our Rail Revolution series. We start with the technology breakthrough in this episode before turning to the markets it unleashed in our next episode. It’s the story of how steam power and the railway were born, and why that story rhymes so closely with the AI buildout happening right now.We begin in 1700s England, a country running out of wood and forced underground for coal, where flooding mines created the desperate problem that the steam engine was invented to solve. From there we trace a century of breakthroughs including Newcomen’s atmospheric engine, James Watt’s separate condenser, Richard Trevithick’s high-pressure locomotive, and the incremental improvements in iron technology.We tell the story of George Stephenson: born dirt-poor in a colliery village, illiterate until 18, with no patrons and no formal training. We follow him from his first locomotive through the Stockton & Darlington, into a brutal Parliamentary cross-examination engineered by the canal lobby to break him, and on to the Rainhill Trials and the opening of the Liverpool & Manchester Railway, which was a national spectacle with a great tragedy that could have derailed the growth of railways.Why did the railway take decades to arrive when the technology was ready years earlier? What does it actually take to commercialize a working invention? And what allowed a self-taught underdog to pull it all together?Stay tuned for our next episode: the railway works, the dividends are real, and the fuse is lit. George Hudson and one of the largest investment manias in history.Chapters(04:48) Life in 1700s England: the wood crisis and the desperate need for coal(08:13) How a steam engine works: vacuum, pistons, and Newcomen’s atmospheric engine(15:13) James Watt’s separate condenser and the partnership with Matthew Boulton(16:41) Richard Trevithick, high-pressure steam, and the first locomotive on rails(21:49) The iron problem: why cheap wrought iron unlocked the railway(22:56) Meet George Stephenson: from illiterate colliery boy to the Stockton & Darlington(29:51) Liverpool’s canal monopoly and the fight for a Parliamentary bill(38:02) George crushed in Parliament(48:49) The Rainhill Trials(53:00) Opening day 1830: spectacle, the Duke of Wellington, and the Huskisson tragedy(1:04:48) Takeaways: the total product and the three ingredients of a tech revolutionReferencesGeorge and Robert Stephenson: The Railway Revolution by LTC Rolt (link)Richard Trevithick: Giant of Steam by Anthony Burton (link)The Most Powerful Idea in the World: A Story of Steam, Industry, and Invention by William Rosen (link)History of Railway Mania by Gareth Campbell (link)Papers on Technology and Financial Manias by Andrew Odlyzko (link)Visualizations of the Newcomen and Watt steam engines, and the Puffing Devil locomotive by Michael De Greasley (link)AI Could Be the Railroad of the 21st Century. Brace Yourself by Derek Thompson (link)Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital: The Dynamics of Bubbles and Golden Ages by Carlota Perez (link)Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey Moore (link)SponsorsBig thanks to EQT Corporation for helping us bring you the stories of market history and how they apply today. To learn more and explore the latest data on energy affordability, go to eqt.com/energy-affordability.Note: this show is for informational purposes only and isn’t investment advice. Backtest hosts and guests may have investments in the companies discussed. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.backtestpodcast.com
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    1 hr and 9 mins
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