The Grant Williams Podcast Ep. 126 - Dominic Frisby FULL EPISODE

**Grant Williams** (0:10)
Before we get going, here's the bit where I remind you that nothing we discuss should be considered as investment advice. This conversation is for informational and hopefully entertainment purposes only. So, while we hope you find it both informative and entertaining, please do your own research or speak to a financial advisor before putting a dime of your money into these crazy markets. And now, on with the show.
Welcome, everybody, to another edition of The Grant Williams Podcast. Joining me in a moment to discuss his brilliant new book is Dominic Frisby, the stand-up comedian, journalist and author who has been one of the leading commentators on gold, certainly in the UK, been writing for Moneyweek for 20 years and been their main commentator on gold mining and Bitcoin. And he's written a bunch of books, Life After The State, Bitcoin, The Future Of Money, Daylight Robbery, How Tax Shaped Our Past And Will Change Our Future. And his latest book, which has just been published, The Secret History Of Gold, Money, Myth, Politics and Power. And I am delighted to finally have a chance to talk with Dominic about the book. We've been circling each other for a while, trying to get a date in the books. It's here. And so I think you're going to enjoy this conversation. So without further ado, here is my discussion about his new book with Dominic Frisby.
Dominic Frisby, welcome to The Grant Williams Podcast. It's a delight to finally get a chance to talk to you. How are you?

**Dominic Frisby** (1:41)
I'm very well, thank you, Grant. And yeah, it's a pleasure to be talking to you as well.

**Grant Williams** (1:45)
Parts have almost crossed in the past when I received a whole load of anonymous cookbooks, which should have gone to your mother. But somehow, after sending me one of your earlier books, you sent me all your mother's cookbooks too, which I have to say, I still get a great deal of use out of. So thank you for that.

**Dominic Frisby** (1:59)
Yeah, my mother had fallen in love with an American celebrity chef and decided for her birthday present, she wanted the entire oeuvre of this celebrity chef. So there were maybe 15 different cookbooks that I bought her. And for some reason, you were the default address in my Amazon US account. So I sent you the entire oeuvre of this woman's cookbooks.

**Grant Williams** (2:21)
You did. And I remain grateful to this day. I feel terrible for your mother, but please apologize to her again on my behalf and I will continue to use them.

**Dominic Frisby** (2:27)
Well, I hope your eating habits have improved.

**Grant Williams** (2:30)
Well, massively, but they couldn't have got much worse, to be honest with you.
Now, the subject at hand today is your fantastic new book, A Secret History Of Gold. And the kind of subtitle, Myth, Money, Politics and Power could not encapsulate the whole thing better. The audience for this podcast is intimately familiar with gold and we'll get on to the book shortly because it's a terrific read and I think you've done what you set out to do, which is make it interesting for people that aren't steeped and fully cognizant of the world of gold and also interesting for those who are already aware of it and understand it. There's a lot of stuff in there that I want to dig into. But first, you've got a very unusual background. And so for people that don't know you, let's talk a little bit about that because how you came to this is a source of great fascination for me and I'm sure it will be for the audience. So let's go back to your earlier days in a very different field.

**Dominic Frisby** (3:15)
Well, I come from a theatrical family and I've spent my whole life as a stand-up comic. And my dad and I in the noughties were trying to turn a small amount of money into a large amount of money because we wanted to put on this West End musical.
And we started reading on the internet about what we should do with our money. And I stumbled across all these people who were going, gold's going to $5,000, gold's going to the moon, the US dollar is going to collapse and all this stuff. And I was rather taken in by it. And I wanted to talk to a lot of these people. And I didn't have to pay them to talk, to get advice from them. So I did what you did is I started a podcast.
I found one of the beautiful things about podcasts. I'm just going off on a tangent. But they're like heightened conversations. So the process of getting to know someone is just accelerated because of the fact that it's an interview and it's just a really good way to get to know people and what they're about very quickly. But obviously, I didn't know this at the time. And so I started this podcast and the very first person I interviewed was Jim Rogers, which is quite the coup, you know, the guy who was Soros, his partner who brought down the pound and the greatest commodities trader of all time. And the next guy I interviewed was David Morgan, who was a very keen silver bug newsletter writer. And the next guy after that was James Turk, who's a well-known gold guy.