The David McWilliams Podcast
The David McWilliams Podcast aims to make economics easy, uncomplicated, and accessible. Each week, the hosts tease out a big economic or political issue facing Ireland, Europe, and the wider world. They believe that what is complicated is rarely important and what is important is rarely complicated. The podcast covers topics from local Irish concerns to global challenges, emphasizing that globalization has brought us all together.
Episodes
Inside the World Cup's Narco State
We head down Mexico way to unpack the country hosting the World Cup, a $1.8 trillion economy living side by side with one of the most powerful criminal networks on earth. Drugs, guns, avocados, and the politics tying Trump and Sheinbaum together whether they like it or not. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Why Social Democracies Win World Cups
The FT's Simon Kuper joins us to kick off our World Cup series, on why tiny social democracies keep producing the best football teams, why FIFA is laundering reputations for dictators, and why this tournament will say more about geopolitics than any leaders' summit this year. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
The Coming Water Crisis
Forget oil. The real fight is over the world's most precious and least understood commodity; water. We're joined by Paul O'Callaghan of BlueTech Research to explain why two billion people still can't get safe drinking water, why Saudi Arabia is quietly draining Colorado, and why Ireland's biggest strategic advantage might just be the rain we love to complain about. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/p
Why Trump Is About to Come for Ireland
Made in Kinsale, sold in America, the Ozempic boom is making Ireland rich and dangerously exposed. We unpack how three companies now pay nearly half our corporate tax, and what happens when Trump finally notices. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
How Trump Could Kill the Dollar
Monetary historian Brendan Greeley explains why the dollar's power has nothing to do with the Fed, why crypto is just a bank in disguise, and why politicising the dollar might be the fastest way to end its reign as the world's reserve currency. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Why Nobody's Having Babies Anymore
Birth rates are collapsing, not just in rich countries, but everywhere from Mexico to Tunisia. The FT's John Burn-Murdoch joins us to unpack the surprising culprit, why young people aren't just having fewer kids, they're not even coupling up, and what it means for the future of work, wealth, Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Britain Is Broke
Britain is running out of money, in a currency it prints itself. We unpack the gilt market panic, Starmer's impossible bind, and why the UK is starting to look more like 1970s Italy than the country that invented modern finance. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Immigration: What's The Plan?
No policy. No plan. No housing. Sinead O'Sullivan is back to explain why Ireland took in more immigrants per head than any country in Europe, and why the middle class is about to feel what the working class has been shouting about for years. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
China Is Winning, Trump Doesn't Know It Yet
China is winning, and Trump doesn't know it yet. As the two leaders sit down in Beijing today, we explain why the Chinese think America is an empire in decline, and why they might be right. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Why Your Barista Has a Master's Degree
What happens when a country produces more graduates than it has elite jobs to give them? According to Peter Turchin, the Russian-American thinker behind End Times, that's exactly the moment civilisations start to crack. This week, we get into his theory of "elite overproduction" and ask whether Ireland is staring straight into it. We unpack the stats: most educated population in the EU, maste
The UAE, Iran, and the Hostage at the Heart of the Oil War
The UAE has just walked out of OPEC after nearly 60 years, and the timing is no accident. This week, we head to Abu Dhabi and Dubai to ask what's really going on. Why now? Why leave the cartel in the middle of a war? What does it mean for the price of petrol in your car, for Trump's midterms, and for the geopolitics of the Gulf? We get into the strange tacit alliance between the UAE and Israel, wh
The Failure Premium: Where is the Money Going?
This week, Sinead O'Sullivan is back, and she's got an answer that official Ireland really doesn't want to hear. We dig into the "failure premium", the staggering cost of a state that knows how to hand out subsidies but has forgotten how to coordinate, build, or own anything. We follow the money: why HAP quietly inflates the rent into the landlord's pocket, why housing a refugee costs €99 a night
Ireland Is Killing Its Entrepreneurs
Ireland is now officially the worst country in Europe for young entrepreneurs. Just 5.1% of our 20-somethings are building their own businesses, less than half the rate in Slovakia. So what the hell happened? This week, we ask why young Irish people have stopped backing themselves, and why a country that looks rich on paper is quietly losing the very people who make economies dance. We get into th
Is America Losing Control?
The global economy runs on one thing: the US dollar. What happens when trust in that system starts to crack? In this episode, we go deep into the mechanics of global finance, from dollar “swap lines” to shadow banking, to explain how the United States became the financial centre of the world, and why that dominance may now be under threat. At the heart of it all is a simple but unsettling reality:
The Premature State: Why Ireland Can’t Build Itself
Ireland is one of the richest countries in Europe, so why does it feel like it isn’t? We sit down with economist and engineer Sinead O'Sullivan to unpack a deceptively simple but deeply uncomfortable idea: Ireland is a premature state. Despite extraordinary wealth on paper, everyday life tells a different story. Housing is broken, infrastructure lags behind, public services struggle to deliver. So
Subsidies, Strikes and the Coming July Clash
Ireland has bought itself three months of peace, but at what cost? This week, we unpack the fallout from the recent fuel protests and what they reveal about the deeper fragility of the Irish system. A small, highly organised group of farmers and truckers managed to bring the country to a standstill, exposing just how vulnerable the state really is. So far, the response has been to just throw money
Is Ireland the Worst-Run Rich Country in Europe?
Ireland looks like a success story on paper: booming tax revenues, record public spending, and a global reputation as a modern, wealthy economy. Yet on the ground, something feels deeply off. In this episode, we step back from the noise of protests, strikes, and rising fuel costs to ask how can a country with so much money deliver so little? From housing and healthcare to transport and infrastruct
The Housing Finale: Can Ireland Build Its Way Out?
After two episodes on how Ireland’s housing market became so brittle, we get to the only question that matters: how do you actually fix it? In this final part of our housing series with Ronan Lyons, we move from diagnosis to prescription. If the crisis was built over decades through bad incentives, bad planning, weak population forecasting, and a deep bias against density, what would it take to re
How The Housing Market Was Designed to Fail - Part 2
In this second episode with Ronan Lyons, we wonder how did a country that once struggled to keep its people end up unable to house them? The answer is a story of unintended consequences. Population booms that were visible but ignored, tax incentives that pushed homes into the wrong places, a planning system that feared apartments and subsidised sprawl and a country that urbanised its jobs, but nev
The Brittle Housing Market: Why the System Is Worse Than You Think - Part 1
Housing is the biggest expense most of us will ever face, and across Ireland and much of the Western world, the system simply isn’t working. Is this another housing bubble, or something more dangerous? In this first episode of a special three-part series on housing, we sit down with Trinity College economist Ronan Lyons to unpack what’s really happening beneath the headlines. Lyons argues the prob
The Next Global Recession?
What does Muhammad Ali’s Rumble in the Jungle have to do with the next global recession? In this episode, we go back to the 1970s oil shocks, when a geopolitical crisis sent energy prices soaring, wealth flooding into oil states, and Western economies into deep recession. The pattern is striking: in 1973, 1979, 1990, and even before the 2008 crash, surging oil prices were followed by collapsing gr
Did Big Tech Ruin the Internet? with Cory Doctorow
What happened to the internet? Why did the platforms that once felt useful, fun and liberating become manipulative, cluttered and hostile? In this episode, we talk to writer, activist and digital theorist Cory Doctorow, the man who coined the term enshittification, about how tech platforms decay: first they are good to users, then they are good to business customers, and finally they become good o
Is the West Losing Africa to China?
South Africa is one of the places where the 21st century is being made in real time. Against the backdrop of war in the Middle East, we ask what rising energy prices mean for countries already struggling with poverty, unemployment and fragile infrastructure. If you want to see the decline of American influence and the rise of Chinese power, Southern Africa is where it’s happening. Along the way, w
Why Some Countries Create Jobs and Others Export People
Broadcasting from South Africa, a country of huge energy, huge potential, and brutally high unemployment, we use that lens to ask what actually creates jobs? From there, we go back to Ireland in 1990, when employment had barely moved in forty years and emigration still felt like the national destiny. So what changed? We unpack the extraordinary shift that turned Ireland from an economy exporting i
Shedonomics: Can Europe Survive China’s Manufacturing Machine?
In this episode, we unpack the new China shock, as exports to Europe surge nearly 30% in just two months and a €359 billion trade deficit keeps widening. From electric cars to fast fashion, Chinese firms are flooding markets with cheaper, faster, and increasingly better products, and Europe is struggling to respond. The real story is actually stranger. We dive into the rise of the “parcel economy,
St Patrick's Day Special: Who Exactly Are The Irish Americans?
On St. Patrick’s Day, we go beyond the parades and pints to ask: what does the Irish diaspora actually mean for Ireland today? From the Presbyterian migrants who helped shape revolutionary America, to the famine generation who built the unions, churches, police forces, and political machines of the great US cities, this episode traces the long economic story of Irish emigration and Irish America.
The Economics of War
What happens to the global economy when a war erupts at the world’s most important energy choke point? In this episode, we trace the economic shockwaves already rippling out from Iran: surging oil and gas prices, rising shipping and insurance costs, higher food and fertilizer bills, and the growing threat of a 1970s-style stagflation shock. This is the old nightmare back again, prices rising while
America's Road to Tehran - Part 2
In part two of our history of Iran and the Middle East, we move from the 1979 Iranian Revolution to the bombing of Tehran today. This is the story of how America’s Cold War obsession with the Soviet Union mutated into something else entirely: the gradual Israelisation of U.S. policy in the region. Along the way we trace the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, America’s backing of the Mujahideen, the r
How the West Lost Iran: Oil, Coups, and the Road to Revolution - Part 1
Iran didn’t suddenly become the geopolitical flashpoint it is today, the roots go back decades. In this first part of a two-part series, we trace the economic and political history that reshaped Iran from the 1940s to the 1979 revolution. From Britain’s oil empire and the CIA-backed coup against Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh to the rise of the Shah as America’s key ally in the Cold War, we exp
Can Democracy Survive an AI Economy?
In this episode, we ask what happens when economic evolution moves from human speed to machine speed. Fresh from an off-the-record discussion with a Nobel Prize–winning AI pioneer Demis Hassibis, we unpack how AI is reshaping medicine, productivity, profits, and power, and why markets are now rewarding mass layoffs as a sign of progress. From Schumpeter’s idea of creative destruction to Jack Dorse
Can Europe’s “Hidden Continent” Finally Break Free?
Broadcast from Serbia, this episode dives into the Balkans, the most misunderstood, most underestimated corner of Europe, and one with the biggest upside if it can ever stop tripping over its own history. We look at why Serbia sits so close to Russia, why Kosovo still blocks the country’s European future, and how war, sanctions, hyperinflation, and decades of bad leadership turned a natural crossr
Can You Prosper Without Building Proper Cities?
This episode begins at the ancient seven-arch bridge in Killaloe, the crossing point where Clare, Tipp and Limerick collide, and jumps to Višegrad in eastern Bosnia, where Ivo Andrić’s The Bridge on the Drina uses one structure to tell a five-century story of tribes, trade, love, and conflict. Back in Ireland, the row over closing the old Killaloe bridge is about suburban sprawl swallowing once-se
Revenge of the Nerds
For forty years, the software engineer was the hero of the modern economy. That era may now be ending, fast. In this episode, we argue that software engineers are becoming the horses of the 21st century. Just as the steam engine replaced animal labour, AI is now eating the lunch of human coders, automating what was once seen as elite, technical, and irreplaceable. Stock markets are already reactin
What Happens to an Economy When Credit Stops Flowing?
Credit is the lifeblood of a modern economy. When it expands, ideas turn into companies, small builders become employers, and innovation compounds. When it contracts, the damage is slower, quieter, and far harder to see. In this episode, we trace what happens when banks stop lending and money stops doing its real work. Using Ireland as a case study, we show how domestic credit has collapsed since
Can the New Fed Boss Shrink QE Without Crashing Everything?
If central banks “control money,” why do we still get credit booms, banking crises, and bubbles, and what can a new Fed chair actually do about it? Who actually controls money, the central bank, commercial banks, or the markets? We break money into two parts: currency and finance . Once you see that split, a more unsettling reality appears: central banks can set the price of money (interest rates)
Why Did Bitcoin Crash Again? The Scam That’s Been Around Since Dante
Not even “thermodynamically sound energy through time and space” makes Bitcoin money. In this episode, we take another hammer to the sacred cow of crypto and ask a simpler question: what does money actually have to do to count as money? We revisit our infamous chat with Michael Saylor at peak crypto-poetry, then go where all good monetary debates should go; back to the original forgers and the ori
Swipe Left on Society: Singledom, Sexless Men, and the New Politics of Loneliness with Aideen McQueen
We think the biggest cultural shift of the last 15 years is inflation, immigration, or housing. It isn’t. It’s singledom, a shockwave moving through Western societies since the smartphone slid into our pockets and quietly rewired how we meet, desire, commit, and build a life. On today’s episode, we unpack the numbers that should make policymakers sit upright: around half of men and 43% of women ag
Stop Wasting Your Talent and Start Making a Difference with Rutger Bregman
In a world where “might is right” is having an ugly little renaissance, Rutger Bregman returns as the perfect antidote: a stubborn, data-backed case that humans are cooperative, that culture is malleable, and that your career doesn’t have to be a slow-motion betrayal of your ideals. We talk about his new book Moral Ambition, and the “Bermuda Triangle of talent” of consulting, finance, and cor
Ireland’s American Problem: The Jockey, the Horses, and the End of the Easy Money Era
Ireland has spent the last two decades riding a unique position: European by treaty, American by economics, a “bridgehead” for US multinationals into the EU, and a country whose prosperity has quietly depended on America’s outsized pull on global capital. But if the US and Europe drift into a real rupture, Ireland becomes the uncomfortable jockey straddling two horses heading in opposite direction
The Great Global Rebalancing: How Trump's America is Losing its Grip on the World's Capital with Sony Kapoor
Everyone watched Trump at Davos and thought they were seeing American power. We think they were seeing something else: a flashing warning light. The core idea of this podcast is simple: diversification is the oldest rule in investing, and the world has ignored it. We’ve funnelled a staggering share of global capital into the United States, treating U.S. markets and Treasuries like the defaul
The old order is not coming back. We should not mourn it. Nostalgia is not a strategy!
This episode is a deep dive into a simple claim: This is the year the mask slipped. The United States has decided that the grand bargain it presided over since 1945 is finished, and the consequences are immediate for markets, alliances, and Europe’s security. We begin in Japan, where a sharp move in long-term government bond yields is forcing a rethink of the global carry trade, and shaking risk a
Trump vs. The Fed: Sabotage, Showdown, or Economic Revolution?
Donald Trump is taking aim at the most powerful, and most opaque, institution in the global economy: the Federal Reserve. By moving to oust Jay Powell through a criminal investigation, Trump has triggered a battle that cuts to the heart of who really controls money in America, and by extension, the world. Is this an unprecedented act of economic sabotage? A dangerous authoritarian power grab? Or i
The Great Uncoupling & Fiscal Crisis: America, Europe & the Bond Market Reckoning
America and Europe are drifting apart, not just politically, but philosophically. In this episode, we dig into the consequences of that split, comparing today’s transatlantic rupture to one of the most overlooked geopolitical divorces of the 20th century: China’s break from the Soviet Union in the 1960s. We explore how competing worldviews, liberal restraint versus autocratic power are reshaping g
The Bipolar Economy: Trump, Oil & the End of Balance with Carole Nakhle
In a single week, Donald Trump goes after the Federal Reserve, criminalises Jerome Powell, and shakes the idea of central bank independence, the quiet pillar holding the global financial system together. At the same time, two oil superpowers, Venezuela and Iran, slide into fresh instability. Coincidence? Not quite. We unpack a world that feels wildly out of balance. In the U.S., markets are boomin
Venezuela Falls, Cuba Trembles with Marla Dukharan
Washington moved on Venezuela, and the shockwaves are racing across the Americas. Oil, refugees, collapsed regimes, back-room deals: this may spell the beginning of the end for Cuba’s 65-year experiment, and the most dramatic geopolitical reset in the region since 1989. We head to the Caribbean to ask who wins, who loses, and who has been quietly complicit all along. Economist Marla Dukaran joins
After Maduro: Who Really Runs Venezuela Now? with Juan Tokatlian
Broadcasting from the streets of Medellín, we dive into Latin America’s reaction to the stunning removal of Nicolás Maduro, and the strange new reality taking shape in Caracas. Is this regime change, an oil grab, or something far more experimental? We’re joined again by Latin America analyst Juan Gabriel Tokatlian, who argues this is the birth of something unprecedented: a U.S.-managed protectorat
What If 2026 Is the Year America Leaves Us Behind?
It’s 2026, and Ireland is skating on a thin economic edge. With the US retreating from Europe, American industry is stalling here, no new labs, no new factories. Our entire model of tax-light, job-rich multinational growth might be reaching its sell-by date. The housing crisis rages, younger people emigrate, and a risk-averse political class hides behind admin. We break down the "known knowns" for
What's Really Going on In Venezuela? Oil, Empire & the Next Proxy War
Venezuela once rivalled Switzerland in wealth, today it’s produced more refugees than Syria. What happened? We go straight to Buenos Aires to talk to leading Latin American analyst Juan Gabriel Tokatlian about how a petrostate collapsed without a war, why US policy is pushing the region to the edge, and what might really be behind American naval deployments off the Venezuelan coast. Is regime chan
2025: China’s Year
For 2,000 years, China has played a different game. While Europe fragmented, fought, and conquered outward, China focused inward, on standardisation, stability, and turning a vast empire into a single nation. In this episode, we explore why China emerged from 2025 stronger than any other power, why it has no interest in ruling the world, and why that restraint may be its greatest strength. From th
Was Genghis Khan the World’s First Globalist?
We usually remember Genghis Khan as history’s ultimate destroyer but what if he was also its first great economic integrator? In this episode, we rethink the Mongol Empire not as pure terror, but as the largest continuous free‑trade zone the world has ever seen, stretching from Korea to Ukraine. By reopening the Silk Road after a thousand years, the Mongols allowed ideas, technologies, and capital
Can Wind Power Make Us Rich Again?
Ireland controls seven times more sea than land, and with the Atlantic blowing 25% stronger winds than the North Sea, we sit on one of the greatest untapped energy jackpots on Earth. This episode dives into the staggering 600 gigawatt potential of offshore wind off Ireland’s coast, enough to power every home and factory in the EU, several times over. So why haven’t we built a new offshore wind far
Europe Under Threat: Can the Centre Hold?
Europe is under pressure militarily, economically, and politically. NATO spending is up 45% since 2014. Germany’s exports to China have dropped 11% in a single year. France is bracing for a possible far-right presidency. Here in Ireland, neutrality suddenly feels less like a principle and more like a liability. In this episode, we ask: is Europe still a power bloc, or just a museum with great croi
The Great Affordability Lie?
Around the world, people feel poorer, even when the numbers say we’ve never been richer. In Ireland, GDP is soaring, household wealth has more than doubled since 2014, and yet most families are pinned to their collar. Why? Because the official poverty line is €33,600, but it now takes at least €52,000 a year just to stay afloat. That’s a 40% gap between what’s measured and what’s felt. Rent has pa
Petty Lines in the Sand
We’re diving into the economics of borders, the lines we pretend are ancient but were mostly scratched into the earth by soldiers, surveyors and empire-builders with rulers. From Ukraine’s shifting frontlines to Dublin’s Herzog Park, to Northern Ireland’s uneasy edges, we trace how geography becomes politics. Then we go back to the original culprit: William Petty, Cromwell’s cartographer, the man
China Explained with Dan Wang
We talk to writer and analyst Dan Wang, whose book Breakneck argues that China is an engineering state, run by people who build, while America, Ireland and the wider Anglosphere have become lawyer states, run by people who litigate. China lays highways and high-speed rail at warp speed; common-law countries file objections and environmental reports. Europe, meanwhile,
Is Central Asia the Next Front Line of Global Power? with Peter Frankopan
Leaving the US after weeks on the road, we zoom out from New York and Washington and asks a question we almost never ask in Europe: what if the real future of geopolitics isn’t in Brussels, Beijing or DC, but in Central Asia? To get there, we bring in historian Peter Frankopan, author of The Silk Roads, to map the region we lazily call “the Stans”; Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzst
Why Can’t the West Build Anymore?
Reporting from New York, with a Bitcoin slump at his heels and the Hollywood-launch buzz of Money: A Story of Humanity still in the air, we dive into one of the most important economic questions of 2025: why can America, Ireland, and Britain no longer build the infrastructure that made them great? From the riveted, soot-stained genius of the New York subway to China’s ability to throw up
Is $4,000 Gold the First Crack in the Fiat Era?
Broadcasting from under the Hollywood sign in the middle of a rare Californian downpour, we follow the water straight into the gold. Starting with LA as a city built on pure imagination, we jump back to the original gold rushes that reshaped the map: California in 1849, the Australian fields, the Klondike, and the deep shafts of South Africa. We meet Johann Sutter and the prospector who accidental
Hollywood, Soft Power & Ireland’s Anti-American Left?
Reporting from West Hollywood, in a rock ’n’ roll hotel with no parties and no drugs as house rules. We take a walk down Sunset Boulevard and into the strange engine of L.A.: a city built almost entirely on imagination, storytelling and constant reinvention. From Mulholland’s aqueduct to the studios that wrote America’s myths, we asks: what does a place like this tell us about capitalism, churn an
Vibecession, AI Mania & The New Casino Economy with Kyla Scanlon
Live at Kilkenomics, we welcome Roscommon's own economics star Kyla Scanlon author of In This Economy for a fast, funny, and razor-sharp tour of where money and mood collide. We get into her “vibecession” idea on why feelings beat spreadsheets, the AI splash that’s propping up markets, and why America is drifting from a work economy to a casino economy. Why are unprofitabl
The Tech Crash, The Demographic Time Bomb, and Ireland’s Future 40
A tech bubble always feels rational until it doesn’t, as Wall Street fuses with Silicon Valley and the entire American economy becomes a single hyper-leveraged bet on AI, we trace the early tremors: falling job numbers, concentration of risk, a market propped up by story over profit. The real shock comes at home, Ireland’s new Future 40 report quietly maps out a country sleepwalking into decades o
The Pope’s Children at 20: How Ireland Grew Up
Twenty years ago, The Pope’s Children changed how Ireland saw itself; a country high on credit, confidence, and Celtic Tiger ambition. Two decades later, we’re back where it all began: the suburbs, the shopping centres, the bouncy castles and breakfast rolls that built a new middle class. We revisit the characters who defined an era, Decklanders, RoboPaddy, Breakfast Roll Man, and the forces that
Australia, Argentina & Ireland: A Tale of Three Economies
Australia is the country Argentina should’ve been, and the country Ireland could become. Seventy years ago, Argentina and Australia stood side by side as the world’s great hopes, rich in land, resources, and ambition. Today, one is a model of steady prosperity, the other a warning wrapped in inflation and political theatre. We dig into how two nations with the same starting line took radically dif
The Life Raft for Billionaires: Why Tech Titans Are Buying New Zealand
As Ireland square up to the All Blacks at the weekend, we are all New Zealand this week, podcasting from the edge of the world, Richie McCaw's old stomping Christchurch, New Zealand. We explore why the world’s richest men are turning NZ's quiet and beautiful South Island into their apocalypse insurance policy. Peter Thiel has bought hundreds of acres near Lake Wānaka, joining a wave of tech b
The AI Bubble: Boom, Bust & Baked in Nimbin
Somewhere between a biker bar in Nimbin and a data centre in Virginia, we try to make sense of the biggest capital boom in history. The AI revolution has garnered $400 billion of spending this year alone, nearly half of all US growth. What if it’s all built on industrial lettuces, tech that expires faster than it earns? From NVIDIA’s chip race to Meta’s debt-fuelled data farms, the same story keep
The Lost Sailors: From Aboriginals to Schumpeter
Deep in an Australian rainforest, surrounded by birds older than any cathedral, We unpack one of the greatest mysteries in human history, how the first people to sail across open seas, 60,000 years ago, became a civilisation that forgot how to sail. The Aboriginal Australians, the oldest continuous culture on Earth, arrived when Europe was still under ice. They built languages older than Latin, ma
The Land of Opportunity Down Under: Australia
Cycling through Brisbane in the heat, we've found a country that hasn’t had a recession in nearly half a century; a statistical miracle in modern capitalism. Australia’s economy has grown steadily since the 1980s, powered by the luck of geography and the grit of immigration. Iron ore alone earns more than €100 billion a year, and one in three residents were born abroad, making it the most immigra
Saudi the Kingmaker: Gaza, Trump & a New Middle East with Andrew Maxwell
Live from Christchurch, literally tomorrow, we bring on Andrew Maxwell, fresh off stage in Riyadh, to ground-truth the social shift you won’t see in think-tank PDFs: 8k-seat comedy arenas, mixed audiences, and a culture moving at startup speed. With approximately 17% of the world’s proven crude reserves, a sovereign fund near $900bn, and a population that’s 65% under 35, Riyadh can bankroll outcom
The Behavioural Budget: How Tax Shapes Us
We promise this isn’t another boring budget breakdown! This week, we’re asking a bigger question: what if taxation isn’t really about raising money, but about changing behaviour? With Ireland awash in corporate tax revenue, the old logic of “tax to fund spending” doesn’t quite hold. So, should we start using taxes to shape how people act, from derelict sites to carbon emissions, and borrow the mon
The Art of Creation with The Edge - Part Two
We’re back with The Edge for part two of our conversation. This time, on the creative mind itself, we talk about what connects the artist and the entrepreneur: the instinct to imagine something that doesn’t exist and make it real. From James Joyce’s Volta Cinema to U2’s Berlin reinvention, we explore how creativity and risk are two sides of the same coin, and why failure, not success, is what real
The Art of Creation with The Edge
Live from the basement, we sit down with The Edge, the musician who wanted to be a scientist, to talk about the spark that connects rock bands and startups. From U2’s early ambition to his work with Endeavour, The Edge shares how curiosity, mentorship, and a willingness to fail can turn creativity into success. We explore why Ireland can’t rely on multinationals forever, how to build a real cultur
What is Radical Politics?
We like to think of the centre as steady, sensible, and grounded, but what if the “centre” is actually the most radical place in politics right now? The real fault line in modern politics isn’t about tax or spending, it’s about culture. Onn those cultural questions the political class has drifted miles away from the people they claim to represent. In Britain, nearly 9 in 10 people think
Culture Wars in the West, Alliances in the East
While the West burns itself out on culture wars, the East is quietly stitching together something bigger. This is the age of geo-economics, where oil, factories, and sheer population size matter more than headlines. On Russia’s border, the numbers tell the story: 4.5 million Russians facing 107 million Chinese. Add India into the mix and you see the outline of an alliance with the power to redraw
Who Owns the Flag? From the American Revolution to Charlie Kirk
We’re in New York this week, celebrating my mam’s 90th birthday and launching The History of Money in the U.S., but the backdrop is America’s deepening culture war. With the 250th anniversary of the Revolution looming, both liberals and MAGA are fighting to “own” the flag, the story, and the soul of America. We dive into Ken Burns’s new PBS series The American Revolution, the forgot
The Economics of Golf
What does golf tell us about money, power, and the way economies work? From billion-dollar sponsorship deals to the rise of LIV Golf, from Tiger Woods to Trump’s golf courses, the fairways of golf are lined with lessons about globalisation, soft power, and the business of status. In this episode, we tee off on the economics of golf, how a game that look
From Cod to Culture: What Inishmore Teaches Us About the Experience Economy
Between 250,000-300,000 tourists land on the island every year, 2,500 a day in summer, and yet it still feels authentic, alive, and deeply Irish. In this episode, we ask: how do remote places like Inishmore thrive in today’s economy, while once-wealthy regions like France’s Île de Ré struggle with emptying out? We dig into the wild history of cod and salt (the currency of empires), why Ireland sal
Could the GAA Solve Ireland’s Housing Crisis?
What if the solution to Ireland’s housing crisis has been sitting on our doorstep all along? We dive into the Danish model of cooperative housing, where 7% of Danes live in co-ops, and a full third of Copenhageners do too, and explore how the GAA, with its 2,200 clubs and pristine community pitches in every village, could spearhead something similar here. Forget developer margins and speculat
Deepfakes, Big Tech, and the Coming AI Crash?
AI investment is exploding: the “Magnificent Seven” of Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Meta, Tesla, and NVIDIA, are ploughing almost 7% of US GDP into AI and data centres. That’s the same scale as the US housing boom in 2006, and greater than the dot-com bubble at its peak. Today, just seven firms make up 34% of the S&P 500, the highest concentration in history. Earnings per share in these c
France on the Brink: Debt, Drama, and a Possible Sixth Republic
Broadcast from Île de Ré, we dive into France’s mounting fiscal mess and political paralysis. With Macron a lame-duck, bond markets charging Paris more than Athens, and a nationwide strike looming, we ask: could Europe’s cornerstone become its weakest link? We unpack France’s towering state-and-semi-state debts, why Japan can print and Paris can’t, the ECB’s “will they/won’t they” backstop if Le P
Economics in a Tent: Live at Electric Picnic 2025
We took economics to a music festival, and somehow packed the tent. In this Electric Picnic highlights episode from Mindfield, we rock up bleary-eyed and buzzing, then dive straight into the big stuff: what Trump’s assault on America’s institutions means for money, markets, and the rest of us. We map the new super-cycle from post-war social democracy to Reagan-Thatcher finance, to today’s populist
