The podcast explored the reasons most of those apartments were empty. It included 31 apartment complexes, totaling over 13,000 apartments. Read more from : A living artifact from the Dutch Golden Age: Yale’s 367-year-old water bond still pays interestĪnother episode on 99pi about the Netherlands is Bijlmer (City of the Future, Part 1) which talks about the Bijlmer housing project built in the 1960s outside of Amsterdam. The Yale curator then visited the pier that the bond helped finance the pier is still in use today. The interest collected in 2015 amounted to 136.20 euros ($153).

Yale is allowed to bring the paper addendum to the Netherlands to collect interest, allowing the bond to remain in their library. However by 1944 there was no longer any room on the bond itself, so a paper addendum is now in use. The only problem is that you need to take the bond with you to collect the interest. When interest was collected, this information was recorded on the bond (see the above image). The bond itself is the proof of ownership. 7g5Metem2l- 99 Percent Invisible January 11, 2020 Collecting payments on the bond, however, is not so easy. In fact, Yale is still in possession of a 1648 Dutch water bond. Because they have no maturity date, some very old bonds are still in circulation. Perpetual bonds are a rare and beautiful thing. It is written on goatskin and now owned by Yale University. The oldest one still paying interest is a 1648 bond from a Dutch water authority to help pay for the construction of a pier. But in 1916, a man named Clarence Saunders opened a store in Tennessee called Piggly Wiggly. If you went shopping, you had to go to a greengrocer, and then to the butcher, then someone delivered your milk, and it was so, so time-consuming. Over time the bonds pay interest, usually maturing over 30 years, meaning that if you’re patient you’ll make a bit of money on the side.īut there are also “perpetual bonds”, which never mature and always create interest for the holder. About a hundred years ago, we didn’t really have supermarkets. Bonds are something governments or companies offer in exchange for a loan from you. One of the mini stories was entitled “ The Forever Bond“. They usually broadcast a few of those at the end of the year around the holidays. One of the episodes I listened to last week was Mini-stories 8, an episode of, you guessed it, mini stories. What can I say – some people just sound really good on radio. It’s quite informative, although I must admit that I like it because the host, Roman Mars, has such a soothing voice.

I was catching up on some episodes of the 99% invisible podcast last week (also known as 99pi).

Ninety nine percent invisible