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
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…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
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…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
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…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
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…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
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…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
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…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
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…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
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…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
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…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
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…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
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…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
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…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
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…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
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…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
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…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
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…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
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…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
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…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
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…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
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 David McWilliams Podcast
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…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
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…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
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…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
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…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
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…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
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…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
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…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
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…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
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…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
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…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
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…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
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…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
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 David McWilliams Podcast
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…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
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…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
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…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
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…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
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…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
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…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
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…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
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…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
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…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
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…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
Is America The Richest Third World Country?
Is the US drifting into Peronism? We trace the playbook, tariffs and import substitution, national champions, censorship-by-intimidation, and a war on…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
Germany, 10 Years After “Wir Schaffen Das”, What Really Happened? with Katja Hoyer
Ten years ago, Angela Merkel opened Germany’s doors to more than 1.1 million asylum seekers in a single year with the words “Wir schaffen das” (“We can do…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
The Nationalisation of the New Home Market
The state has quietly become the biggest buyer of new homes. In fact, builders like Cairn Homes now have forward sales of nearly €946 million, much of it…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
Ukraine at the Crossroads: From Donetsk to the Garrison State
After nearly 11 years of war, Putin’s maximalist demands have shrunk to a sliver of land in Donetsk, a pyrrhic victory after countless lives lost and millions…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
Ireland is a Hostage to Fortune
Have we caught a case of Dutch Disease? Ireland’s dependence on foreign multinationals looks less like a golden goose and more like Japanese knotweed…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
America’s Dutch Disease: How Debt Became the World’s Hottest Export
We’ve always known Dutch Disease as what happens when a country strikes oil or gas and accidentally hollows out the rest of its economy. But what if the United…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
From The Godfather to the Blockchain: How Easy Money Seduced Wall Street (and the White House)
We’ve always said to understand the economy, you have to understand human nature, and nothing reveals that better than watching the biggest players do a…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
Japan: Lost in Translation Part Two
We all love a boom story, until it turns into a 40‑year hangover. In 1995, Japan’s nominal GDP hit its high‑water mark. It took until the 2020s to get back…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
Japan: From Feudal Isolation to Economic Superpower
This week marks 80 years since the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and we’re taking a deep dive into Japan’s extraordinary economic story. In part…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
Generation Rent: How Housing Costs Are Exporting Ireland's Future
This week we talk to Matthew Ruddy, a young Dublin entrepreneur who did everything right - built his first business at 17, worked alongside the lads at…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
Did Europe Just Surrender to Trump?
Not so fast! We unpack the surprise EU-US trade deal that has everyone shouting sellout but we see it differently. In this episode, we take a deeper look at…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
When the West Woke Up: How Yugoslavia Fell Apart
This week, we take you back to the final years of Yugoslavia, a country that exploded into one of the bloodiest wars Europe has seen since WWII. We trace how…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
Why Ireland Must Rethink Its Economic Future; Fast
In this week’s episode, we dive headfirst into the economic storm clouds gathering over Ireland, and the urgent need to act before we get soaked. We explore…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
The Ghosts of Yugoslavia: Borders, Bankers & Balkan Ghosts
In this episode, we dive headfirst into one of Europe’s most brutal and under-discussed chapters: the collapse of Yugoslavia. Live from Croatia, where the…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
Can We Cope With This Level of Immigration?
This week on the podcast, we take on the two biggest issues shaping our future: immigration and housing. We begin with the looming threat of U.S. tariffs…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
Who Wants to Live Forever? The Economics of Immortality, Tech Bros & Tír na nÓg
This week, we start with Oasis and end in Silicon Valley, via Tír na nÓg. We’re talking about the economics of not dying, and how tech billionaires are pouring…
- The David McWilliams Podcast
Trieste and the City of the Future
Trieste is a city that’s belonged to everyone, and no one. This week, we go walking through a place that’s been Austrian, Italian, Yugoslav, and, at one point…