{"href":"https://api.simplecast.com/oembed?url=https%3A%2F%2Fthe-rest-of-history.simplecast.com%2Fepisodes%2Fthe-accountant-who-burned-the-world-soNNezWB","width":444,"version":"1.0","type":"rich","title":"The Accountant Who Burned the World","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_url":"https://image.simplecastcdn.com/images/96a10b54-3566-4ae1-87fd-fd8bff7bd182/0e4303a1-2092-491e-a49a-e18cf4c76606/the-20rest-20of-20history.jpg","thumbnail_height":300,"provider_url":"https://simplecast.com","provider_name":"Simplecast","html":"<iframe src=\"https://player.simplecast.com/c9297560-bdf8-4798-b3b5-d10283d27e3f\" height=\"200\" width=\"100%\" title=\"The Accountant Who Burned the World\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"></iframe>","height":200,"description":"In 1788, a meticulous British bureaucrat named John Dodd ordered a routine housekeeping task at the Palace of Westminster — the destruction of a pile of old wooden tally sticks — and accidentally set off a fire that leveled Parliament and gave us the Gothic building standing today. But the real story isn't the fire: it's what those tally sticks were, why they'd survived for 600 years, and how a medieval accounting technology outlasted the British Empire's attempts to kill it."}