Abstract
Our Recall This Buck series began by speaking with Christine Desan of Harvard Law School about how key ideas-and the actual currency, physical coins and bills- underlying the modern monetary system get "invisibilized" with that system's success, so that seeing money clearly is both harder and more vital. Today, illustrious Princeton historian Peter Brown narrates the emergence, in the 3rd and 4th century AD, of striking new ideas about charity and how to include the poor inside a religious community.