Shows / The David McWilliams Podcast
The David McWilliams Podcast
The aim of this weekly podcast is to make economics easy, uncomplicated and accessible. With the world at a political, technological and financial tipping point, economics has never been so important to all of us and yet, it’s made inaccessible and complicated by so many.I’ve always thought what is complicated is rarely important and what is important is rarely complicated.That will be our motto.Every week we are going to tease out some big economic or political issue facing us, not just here…
Episodes
- The David McWilliams Podcast
Jackson Hole Reckoning: The $40 Trillion Debt Crisis and the End of Fiscal Exceptionalism
As global central bankers convene for the Jackson Hole symposium, the interrogation of American fiscal credibility takes center stage. With US national debt…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
How A Massacre Created Modern Capitalism: The Huguenot Legacy
On the anniversary of the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, we explore the extraordinary economic impact of the French Huguenots. Discover how these religious…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
20 Years Since the Celtic Tiger: Why the Irish Banking System is Still Broken
August 2006 marked the beginning of the end for the Celtic Tiger, but the legacy of that crash continues to stifle the Irish economy today. We explore how the…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
The Chief Rule Breaker: David Gardner on Beating the Market
I first came across The Motley Fool while working in the "bulge bracket" banks of the late 90s, where the goal was often to keep the public out. Sitting down…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
The Caveman and That Dunsinking Feeling
We mark Mack's 60th birthday by tackling the systemic paralysis of the Irish housing market. We examine the "CAVE" phenomenon: Citizens Against Virtually…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
The Yen Dollar Euro Salad
We explore the US Treasury’s unprecedented decision to prop up the Japanese Yen by selling Euro assets, a move that bypassed the ECB and shattered decades of…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
AI Deflation: The New Railway Crash?
Tech bros promise a miracle, but history warns of a bubble. We explore how AI-driven deflation could trigger a global debt meltdown, starting with the warning…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
What Does The Ceuta Incident Mean For Europe?
This week, we’re diving into a story that wasn't on anyone’s bingo card: 50,000 people breaching one of the most fortified borders in the world in a single…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
Prometheus Abides
Is AI our new Prometheus, or have we just opened Pandora’s box? We dive into the risks of "techno-feudalism," why the "middleman" being replaced by robots is…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
The €133 Billion Black Hole: Why Ireland Can’t Track Its Spending
Theoretical physicist Matt Fenlon joins the podcast to expose the systemic lack of transparency in Irish public expenditure. As the state budget doubles to…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
Rich Country, Broken State
Ireland has cash coming out of its ears, and nothing to show for it. Sinead O'Sullivan is back to expose the wild dysfunction inside the Irish state: no one is…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
Spain Won Again, 500 Years Later
Spain beat Argentina 1-0 in a scrappy, dirty World Cup final, in what felt like 500 years of history playing out on a pitch in New Jersey. We use the final as…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
Is AI About to Crash the Global Economy?
History says yes. We rewind to 1873, when a stock market wobble in Vienna triggered a global railway crash that took down banks, empires and 80% of world…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
Mbappé vs Le Pen: The Battle for France
On this 14th of July, as Les Bleus face Spain in the semi-final, France is heading into a political crisis that could reshape Europe because where France goes…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
England V Norway: A Tale of Two Oil Discoveries?
Norway turned North Sea oil into $2 trillion in the bank. Britain turned it into tax cuts, unemployment cheques and a housing bubble. We unpack the tale of two…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
Alexander Hamilton: How a Caribbean Orphan Built America
250 years on, we ask the question: would America even exist without Alexander Hamilton? We tell the story of the French-speaking outsider who created the…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
Ireland's Silent Sell Off and the Employee Ownership Solution
Every day that the Irish Financial Service Centre is open, they're selling an Irish business into foreign ownership. Since 2018, overseas acquirers have spent…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
The Death of the American Dream
SpaceX just IPO'd, surged, and torched billions of small investors. It's the new American economy. From prediction markets to crypto to day-trading teens, we…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
The Man Who Broke the Global Economy
Alan Greenspan just died at 100, and he might be the most consequential person of the last 30 years that nobody talks about. We unpack the wild story of the…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
Why Did Brazil Never Make It?
The country of the future has been stuck in the future for 100 years. We dig into Brazil's wild economic story; slavery, the secret "whitening" immigration…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
The EU Is Cracking
Europe just got overtaken, and it knows it. From a bar in Brussels, we unpack the ancient fault line tearing the EU apart, why China's rise has spooked the…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
World Cup Series: Haiti
Haiti just qualified for its first World Cup in 50 years, and they come from the poorest country in the Americas, a place where gangs run the capital and the…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
Could Canada Have A Brexit Moment?
Mark Carney is being hailed as the new leader of the free world. While he's facing down Trump abroad, his real headache is at home, Alberta, Canada's Texas, is…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
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…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
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…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
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…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
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…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
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 David McWilliams Podcast
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…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
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…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
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…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
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…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
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…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
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…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
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…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
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 David McWilliams Podcast
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…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
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…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
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 David McWilliams Podcast
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…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
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…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
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…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
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…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
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…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
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…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
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…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
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?…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
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…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
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…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
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…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
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…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
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…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
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…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
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…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
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…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
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…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
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…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
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…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
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…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
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…