The David McWilliams Podcast

Recorded live at Kilkenomics, we’re joined by the FT’s John Burn-Murdoch, the most interesting data journalist writing today. Wealth inequality’s share may not have budged in 40 years, but incomes haven’t kept pace with wealth, so working your way from the middle to the top has gone from hard to basically impossible. That’s why young people are piling into crypto, gambling and tech stocks, not fecklessness, but a rational bet when the conveyor belt has stopped. We get into the pensions time-bomb (today’s retirees take out 3-4 times what they paid in, millennials will get back about €1 for €1), why a youthquake alone can’t fix it, and why the AI jobs story isn’t layoffs but a hiring freeze that hits the young hardest. Plus the one growth sector AI can’t touch: human interaction. And yes, hackers cooking Europe’s supermarket fridges.

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The AI story has flipped from a technology story to a credit story, and that changes everything. Anthropic’s bonds have been downgraded to junk, Elon Musk says credit markets are closing to anything with “AI” attached, and half a trillion dollars was wiped off Alphabet in a single day. We dig into the uncomfortable data: outside the Magnificent Seven, AI has delivered almost zero productivity payoff to corporate America, revenue per worker is flat across the other 493 S&P companies. Then the real danger: if inflation forces the Fed to push rates from 4% to 6.5% to crush it, an overvalued AI market smashes straight into rising rates driven by a war in Iran. Plus why Christine Lagarde’s early exit from the ECB might have one eye on the French presidency.

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In Israel, Netanyahu has lost ground but still frames every choice as “Bibi or Tibi,” and liberal Israel faces a once-in-a-generation chance to oust him, if it can stomach governing with the Arab parties who took 18% of the Knesset. We talk to Daphna Maor of The Marker (Haaretz) from Tel Aviv, put the odds at 50-50, and ask whether the Arab bloc could become Israel’s Parnell holding the balance of power. Then the US midterms, voting tonight. Inflation, mortgage rates at 7%, flatlining house prices and a K-shaped economy have Trump on the ropes, while the top 1% have gained wealth and immigration has vanished as a worry. The twist: if Trump loses the House and Senate, foreign affairs is all he’s got left, which could make him more dangerous, not less. Plus Serbia’s students topple Vučić and Bolsonaro flees to the US.

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For Halloween, we start with Ireland’s first witch trial: Alice Kyteler, the Kilkenny moneylender who buried four husbands and skipped town, leaving her servant to burn at the stake in 1324. For a real scare, we dive into the five numbers that should keep you up at night. The Shiller index at 41 (last seen in 1999, just before the dot-com crash), global government debt at 94% of GDP, The US paying $1 trillion a year just to service its debt, more than its defence budget, the 10-year Treasury yield at 5.36%, a 24-year high and oil at $110, 80% up on last year, thanks to the Strait of Hormuz. If it all goes pear-shaped, the question is simple: who’s the witch?

Use code WITCH at kilkenomics.com for 20% off tickets all day October 30th & 31st

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A week of rioting in France, but we argue it’s no blip. Marine Le Pen is polling around 35%, with the next candidate on just 14%, and she could become the first ever to win outright in the first round. French public spending is 57% of GDP (31% in Ireland, and above anything the Soviet Union managed), over-65s have gone from 12% of the population in 1968 to 25% today, and bond yields have jumped from 3.4% to 4.8%. We unpack the poly-crisis behind it: the 68ers versus their grandchildren, diesel prices and the ghost of the Gilets Jaunes, a left captured by the educated elite, AI anxiety, and half of French schools missing a teacher. Plus 68% of French voters say democracy isn’t delivering, Meloni getting outflanked on her right, and whether the European project survives the generation that built it.

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Canada has appointed the world’s first minister for AI, and Evan Solomon joins us to explain why. Canada invented modern AI through Hinton, Bengio and Sutton, then watched big tech harvest it. Now Ottawa is subsidising up to 80% of compute for home-grown firms and has put €150 million behind Bengio’s “safe by design” AI. How do slow, deliberate democracies regulate a technology teaching itself at lightning speed? Plus Carney’s coalition of middle powers, why Trump is the best thing to happen to Canadian nationalism, and “ancestral intelligence.”

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Broadcasting from the Aran Islands, where the population has crashed from 48,000 to 3,000, we look at what may be the biggest data point of 2026: for the first time ever, the human race is shrinking. The global fertility rate has dropped to 1.8, below the 2.1 needed to replace ourselves, and of 236 countries studied, 219 are in decline. The twist is that it’s happening fastest among poorer, less-educated women in poorer countries, which wrecks the old rule that you have to get rich before you get old. So is modernity itself the culprit, and could tradition stage a comeback? Plus, why AI scepticism sent investors rushing back into bonds this week.

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Live from New York, with a radical idea: treat the Irish diaspora as our greatest soft power asset. Every Irish child costs the state about €500,000 to educate, and America pockets the return when they emigrate. So scrap tax for two years for anyone coming home, and give citizenship to a third generation of Irish Americans. Then the midterms, four weeks out. Trump is on 33%, the lowest of any midterm president since 1974, petrol is back above $4, and markets give Democrats a 65% shot at both chambers. A blue wave makes him a lame duck.

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Ireland’s budget surplus is €9 billion, but the Department of Finance reckons €23 billion of the €34 billion in corporation tax is transient AI-boom money. Strip it out and we’re looking at a €13-14 billion deficit, heading for €20 billion by 2029. Meanwhile we’ve just pumped €7.4 billion of tax cuts and handouts into an economy already at full employment. Recorded live from New York, where financiers are getting twitchy about an AI bubble: US long-term rates are creeping towards 6%, and superscalers now gobble up 17% of the capital the Treasury needs. We ask whether Ireland is Norway or Nigeria when it comes to managing a windfall, why a hard budget focuses the mind, and why a rotating Taoiseach and a split Department of Finance add up to ordering two tiramisus because the voucher is free.

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Calouste Gulbenkian never drilled a well, never owned a rig, and still died the richest man in the world. We follow the Armenian fixer from Constantinople who took 5% of everything: the Turkish Petroleum Company, Royal Dutch Shell, even a deal with Stalin paid in Hermitage art. His maps shaped modern Iraq and left the Kurds sitting on top of the oil, and his split of upstream, refining and distribution still defines Big Oil today. Plus why diesel is spiking, what a 100 million barrel release really does, and why this misanthropic networker gave his fortune to art while today's billionaires build spaceships.

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Dublin prices have fallen 5.2% last year, the biggest drop since 2014, and the buyer's strike is real. The premium over asking has shrunk from 7% to 2.6%, and the average couple on €108k can borrow just enough for a €484k home when a three-bed semi in Dublin asks €635k. We break down why: young people are maxed out, we're still building 1980s houses for a 2020s population, and the force driving prices this time is people, not credit like in 2008. Plus the Spanish eviction story that had Madrid in uproar, and why "the cure for high prices is high prices."

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15-year-olds across the OECD are now testing at levels last seen among 14-year-olds a decade ago, we've lost a full year of cognitive ability in ten years. One in five teenagers in the rich world would struggle to read their own phone bill. We dig into why: screens, AI shortcuts, the death of patient reading, and a "snowflake-isation" of education that's swapped hard exams for soft assessment. Ireland's own numbers aren't pretty either, with reading and maths both sliding since 2015. Is this really decline, or have we simply hit a natural ceiling on middle-class intelligence, meaning the real gains left are among poorer kids?

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Can a generous welfare state and large-scale immigration coexist? Fresh research says it depends on who arrives and what kind of welfare state they arrive in. In the UK, an average migrant couple needs a primary earner in the 55th percentile to pay their way. In Germany, it's the 28th. In Ireland, our back-of-envelope sums say the 65th, or about €62,000 a year. We break down why Ireland's tax and welfare system, where someone on €27,000 gets €11,000 back from the state and someone on €104,000 pays in €40,000, changes the whole debate.

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Trump and Xi sit down in Washington today, but the real story is how China actually built its economic juggernaut. China expert Yanmei Xie breaks down the "catfish in the sardine tank" strategy behind China's EV dominance, why Chinese carmakers compete profit margins down to 3-4% just to win market share, and how a Leninist system mobilises household savings to fund it all.

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This episode provides a midterm assessment of the Irish economy, exploring the disconnect between record-breaking macroeconomic data and the lived experience of the public. We analyse the "Ed Sheeranization" of Ireland,the delicate balance between American corporate reliance and European political identity, and the systemic risks posed by the global AI arms race. From "Dutch disease" to the challenges of economic gluttony, we examine why Ireland’s future is now entirely in its own hands.

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There has been a transition from a world of abundant capital to one of scarcity. With the rising interest rates across the US, UK, and France, we discuss the economic implications of Donald Trump’s "fairway diplomacy" in Ireland, the structural fragility of European bond markets, and the sudden shift in rhetoric from AI leaders calling for regulation. Is the move to "pace the frontier" is a moral awakening regarding existential risk or a strategic play for state protection in a tightening financial landscape?

NYC Tickets: https://irishartscenter.org/event/an-evening-with-david-mcwilliams-2026

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This week, we analyse the collapse of Ireland's night-time economy, noting that 2,205 pubs, one in four nationwide, have closed since 2005. With regional closure rates hitting 37% in Limerick and 33% in Cork, the discussion highlights how high excise duties and archaic licensing laws are strangling a $4 billion industry that supports 92,000 jobs. The episode explores why a country that markets itself on fun is systematically shutting down its social infrastructure.

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Donald Trump touches down in Doonbeg this weekend for the Irish Open at his own golf course, and we're asking whether Ireland should protest or play along. We unpack the extraordinary Irish-American relationship: 40 daily flights to the US, $1.3 trillion in American investment, 300,000 jobs, and a bond built more on kitchen tables than diplomacy. We're joined by Donal Casey, former CEO of Rory McIlroy Inc., to talk golf's economics, why LIV Golf failed despite Saudi billions, and how the fairway - not the barricades, might be Ireland's smartest move with America's most unpredictable president.

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A deep dive into the AfD’s 44% victory in Saxony-Anhalt and its implications for the European Union. We analyse the collapse of Germany’s political center, the demographic divide among young voters, and the historical tensions between East and West that are reshaping the continent’s future.

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We explore the new ideological divide between Silicon Valley’s techno-optimists and institutional economists like Daron Acemoglu. Will AI drive shared prosperity or concentrate wealth among a new technocratic elite? 

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Our population's just hit 5.5 million, and 72% of that growth is migration, not births. Five years ago 57% of work permits went to doctors, nurses and scientists. Now it's just 30%. We crunch the CSO numbers and ask the question nobody wants to: how many migrants can Ireland's housing market actually take before something breaks?

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As global central bankers convene for the Jackson Hole symposium, the interrogation of American fiscal credibility takes center stage. With US national debt surpassing $40 trillion and interest payments now exceeding the defense budget, the Treasury faces a critical standoff with the bond market. This analysis explores the limits of yield manipulation, the threat to the dollar’s role as global collateral, and the inevitable market-driven correction facing a politically paralyzed Washington.

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On the anniversary of the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, we explore the extraordinary economic impact of the French Huguenots. Discover how these religious refugees pioneered the merchant class, redefined the relationship between faith and finance, and built the foundations of modern capitalism. From the streets of Paris to the boardrooms of the Bank of Ireland, this episode uncovers the hidden history of the people who transformed the global economy.

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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 refinancing game collapsed, why Irish banks have become safe deposit boxes where money goes to die, and how the Central Bank’s over-regulation is forcing the state to take over the construction industry. Discover why Ireland is fighting with one arm tied behind its back and what it will take to get credit flowing to small businesses again.

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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 with David Gardner, the man who helped break those walls down, was a masterclass in financial sovereignty. We discuss his six-trait framework for identifying world-beaters, the psychological grit required to ignore "overvalued" labels, and why the most powerful move an investor can make is simply to keep holding.

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We mark Mack's 60th birthday by tackling the systemic paralysis of the Irish housing market. We examine the "CAVE" phenomenon: Citizens Against Virtually Everything, and how local objections are stalling massive developments like Dunsink. We'll walk you through why the state succeeds at attracting foreign investment but fails at building homes, and what this means for the next generation of Irish citizens.

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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 diplomatic norms. This episode breaks down how America’s $1 trillion debt service is driving aggressive financial maneuvers and what the erosion of the global rules-based order means for the future of the Eurozone. We analyse the structural fragility of the US economy and the potential for a European retaliation that could reshape global geoeconomics.

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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 signs in South Korea.

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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 weekend. We’re talking about "demographic warfare," the new reality where migration is weaponised to pull the strings of global politics. From the lanyard class in Brussels to the average dude on the street, the gap over immigration is turning into a chasm, and the European Union is starting to fray at the seams. We look at the geopolitical axis between Washington, Tel Aviv, and Rabat, and ask the big question: can the European project survive when its borders become the ultimate battlefield? To understand the economy, you have to understand human nature. 

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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 actually just us, and why 3,000 years of Greek wisdom might be more useful than a Silicon Valley algorithm. It’s a bit of mythology, a bit of economic history, and a reminder that while intelligence is great, wisdom is what keeps the social fabric from fraying. As the Big Lebowski says, the dude abides. Join us.

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Theoretical physicist Matt Fenlon joins the podcast to expose the systemic lack of transparency in Irish public expenditure. As the state budget doubles to €133 billion, Fenlon discusses the black hole in procurement, the surge in opaque consultancy fees, and how a Golden Thread of data could finally bring accountability to government spending. This conversation explores why the Irish state struggles to measure value for money and what happens when a bureaucracy becomes larger than the political class meant to manage it. Check out the spending tracker discussed in the episode at: statespend.ie.

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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 accountable, nothing gets finished, and the same problems get "solved" over and over again.

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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 an excuse to ask the big question: why did Spain's colonies end up poor and England's end up rich? Silver, slavery, the Inquisition, and the invisible thread that still connects a Buenos Aires slum to a New Jersey kitchen.

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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 lending in a matter of months, and ask whether we're staring straight at a rerun. AI spending is now bigger than the entire US defence budget, the same handful of companies are quietly funding each other in a circle, and China is quietly open-sourcing the whole thing to undercut Silicon Valley. If it pops, it'll pop between now and October.

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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, Europe usually follows. We dig into why Marine Le Pen is now the favourite for the presidency, why the French football team has become her loudest critic, and, with France on the brink, why a World Cup win might yet influence politics in a way that few sporting achievements have ever done before.

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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 oil finds, why one country nailed it and the other blew it, and what it says about how nations really make, and lose, their fortunes.

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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 dollar, faced down the states, and set the world's biggest economy in motion, before being murdered in one of history's strangest duels.

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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 over €100 billion buying up Irish companies. I'm joined by Alan Coleman to look at why this is happening. We look at employee ownership trusts as a solution already working in the UK and Canada, the tax barriers holding it back in Ireland, and the surprising historical Irish precedent for the idea.

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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 look at how the US quietly turned itself into the world's biggest casino, and why young Americans are gambling because they've given up on working.

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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 jazz clarinettist turned Fed chairman, the Ayn Rand cult he came from, the "Greenspan Put" that quietly rigged Wall Street, and why his fingerprints are all over Ireland's 2008 crash. Plus a strange historical twist: was Alan Greenspan related to the Jewish teenager whose shooting triggered Kristallnacht?

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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 policy that sent millions of Italians south, and why Brazilian football carries the weight of a whole nation's identity.

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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 continent more than anyone admits, and why the "European way of life" might already be slipping away.

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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 average person earns $45 a month. We trace how the world's first successful slave revolution ended up here: French gunboats, a 120-year debt, ecological collapse, and an island where one half (the Dominican Republic) is racing ahead while the other is forgotten. 

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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 gearing up for a referendum that could split the country in two.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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, 

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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, master's degrees doubling in 15 years, and nearly one in three graduates working in jobs that don't need a degree. We talk about why the barista with a first-class honours and the barman with an economics master's are not just funny anecdotes, they're leading indicators of political instability. We look at how the public sector is quietly absorbing the overflow that the private sector can't, why AI is about to pour petrol on the fire, and why historically it's not the abject poor who revolt, it's the relatively rich and bitterly disappointed.

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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, why Iran's real leverage isn't the Straits of Hormuz but the Emirates themselves, and how Saudi Arabia's old swing-producer power is being quietly dismantled. We also draw a much bigger lesson for small countries everywhere, including Ireland: the multilateral world that small states have hidden inside since the 1940s is breaking down, and the UAE's gamble is a glimpse of the hard choices that lie ahead. Oil, war, money, and the end of an era, all in one episode.

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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 here and €13 in the Netherlands, and why we're paying premium prices for second-rate outcomes across housing, health, and infrastructure. We look at how a country adapts to dysfunction, sheds in back gardens, hollowed-out city centres, kids emigrating, until we stop noticing it's not normal. What happens when the multinational money slows down and we're left holding the infrastructure deficit we never fixed?

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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 the difference between wealth that's extracted (the multinationals) and wealth that's created (the Ryanairs), and why one is far more fragile than it looks. We bring in Schumpeter and Nassim Taleb, follow a hypothetical 27-year-old called Kiera as the numbers crush her before she's even begun, and ask whether Ireland has become a nation of doubters, quietly punishing anyone who dares to have a go. We float a fix: stop parking the multinational windfall in a pension fund our 25-year-olds will never see, and turn it into a startup fund they can actually use. Because without risk-takers, there's no return, and without return, there's no economy.

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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: America doesn’t just produce goods, it produces money. The rest of the world needs dollars to trade, invest, and survive financial shocks. That gives the US enormous power, but also creates dangerous imbalances. We explore how decades of financialisation have concentrated wealth and influence in a small group of investors, reshaping both the American economy and global politics. Meanwhile, rising geopolitical tensions, particularly around Iran, raise a bigger question: could a single strategic misstep do to the US what the Suez Crisis did to Britain, quietly ending its era of dominance?

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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 where is all the money going? The answer, as Sinead argues, is structural. Ireland has become exceptionally good at spending money, but never properly learned how to build systems. For centuries, key functions of the state were outsourced, first to the British Empire, then the Church, then the EU, and now multinational corporations. The result is a country rich in resources, but lacking the institutional muscle to turn that wealth into a functioning society. We also take on the reaction to this kind of thinking; the “nitpickers” who focus on minor details to avoid confronting big, uncomfortable truths. If Ireland’s problem isn’t money, but capacity, then the implications are far more serious than any short-term fix.

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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 at the problem. With subsidies set to expire in July, long summer nights, rising tensions, and the spotlight of the European presidency arriving, all the ingredients are in place for a perfect storm. Add in growing populism, rural frustration, and anti-immigration sentiment, and the question becomes unavoidable: has the government just incentivised the next crisis? At the heart of it all is a bigger issue, a state that increasingly relies on cash instead of control, short-term fixes instead of long-term thinking, and political optics over real strategy.

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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 infrastructure, the pattern is the same, soaring budgets, missed targets, and no consequences. We explore the idea that this is an insidious system where incentives are broken, accountability is absent, and a permanent “Mandarin class” operates behind the scenes, untouched by elections or outcomes. The result is an economy where public spending fuels inflation, squeezes workers, and hollows out the productive sector. This has graduated from a left-versus-right story to a question of care versus contempt. Unless that changes, Ireland risks squandering a once-in-a-generation windfall while the cracks in the system grow wider.

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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 reverse it? We talk about viability, tax incentives, apartments, one-off housing, planning reform, and the hard truth that Ireland cannot solve this crisis with slogans, targets, or recycled talking points. It needs a system that matches the way people actually live now: smaller households, urban jobs, rising population, and huge pent-up demand. This is the finale of the series, so we pull the threads together. Not just what went wrong, but what a serious housing strategy would look like if the country finally decided to stop managing decline and start building for the future.

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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 never its housing. Along the way, we unpack the myth that the crisis began in 2008, that credit is the main culprit, that Ireland is uniquely obsessed with homeownership. Instead, what emerges is something more unsettling, a system shaped over decades by reasonable decisions that, taken together, produced something deeply dysfunctional. Across the Western world, housing markets are showing the same cracks. If you understand how the system was built, you realise just how hard it will be to fix.

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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 problem isn’t a speculative bubble like the 2000s. Instead, we’re living in a “brittle” housing system, one where pressure has quietly built for years because societies simply aren’t building the right homes in the right places for the way people live today. This means young people stuck living with parents, sharing overcrowded homes, or emigrating to start their lives elsewhere. We explore how focusing only on prices and rents misses the real issue, why housing shortages are now appearing across Europe and the English-speaking world, and how demographic change is colliding with planning systems designed for a different era. Part one asks the key question: Where are we now?

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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 growth, falling trade, and rising unemployment. The numbers are brutal. Global growth fell from 6% to 1.4% in the mid-1970s. Trade swung from double-digit expansion to contraction. In Ireland, inflation hit over 20% and recovery took years. Each time, even when oil prices fell back, the damage stuck, factories closed, jobs disappeared, and economies never fully reset. Now it’s happening again. Another oil shock, another geopolitical crisis, and the same underlying vulnerability: we are still deeply dependent on fossil fuels. Ireland is now among the most energy-dependent countries in Europe, with some of the highest electricity costs in the EU. If every oil shock in modern history has triggered a recession, why would this time be any different? Who’s on the ropes now, and who’s about to take the hit?

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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 only to shareholders and executives. From Facebook and Instagram to Amazon, ad fraud, app lock-in, monopoly power and the slow death of the high street, this is a conversation about how digital capitalism corrodes the things we rely on. But it is also about what can be done, why regulators failed, how political will may be shifting, and why the fight against corporate power is suddenly back on the table. 

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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, we get a street-level feel for modern South Africa, from the fading grandeur of central Joburg to the sprawling reality of Soweto, where apartheid’s legacy still shapes daily life, but where democracy has also held in ways many once thought impossible. We talk about inequality, migration, religion, corruption, black economic empowerment, and the strange new elite of “slay queens,” all as windows into how power and money now move through South African society. With exploding population growth, vast mineral wealth, and huge renewable energy potential, the continent is becoming central to the global economy. China understands that. The West, increasingly, does not. 

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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 its young people into one of the strongest job creators in Europe: devaluation, falling interest rates, the Berlin Wall dividend, peace in the North, American investment, and a transformed national mood. Politicians love talking about “job creation,” yet jobs are not created by speeches, slogans, or government press releases. Jobs come after demand, after sales, after risk, after somebody decides to build something, sell something, and back themselves. In other words: jobs are derived from entrepreneurship.

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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,” where billions of low-value packages bypass traditional retail, and the even more surreal “shed economy,” where informal logistics networks are quietly distributing Chinese goods across Europe. Can Europe still produce anything at all? If one country can make everything cheaper, what’s left for everyone else? And if trade stops being two-way, does free trade itself break down? Was Trump right all along?

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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. However, this is also about the present, is there still such a thing as a coherent Irish America, or has it dissolved into the wider American mainstream? If the old bonds are fading, should Ireland be doing far more to reconnect with the tribe abroad? On a day when Ireland celebrates itself to the world, we ask what the diaspora gave us, what remains of that identity now, and how a small country might think much bigger about one of its greatest global assets.

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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 growth slows. We explain why the Straits of Hormuz matters so much, why Europe is far more exposed than America, how energy shocks feed into mortgages, inflation and consumer confidence, and why even countries with no direct trade with Iran will still feel the pain. From Beirut to Dublin, from jet fuel to grocery bills, this is the economics of a war that could redraw the Middle East as well as the global economy too.

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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 rise of Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Iran-Iraq War, the Iran-Contra scandal, the Intifadas, Oslo, Netanyahu, Hamas, and the long collapse of any serious Palestinian settlement. What began as a struggle over oil, empire, and superpower rivalry became a different kind of conflict altogether, one driven by proxy wars, sectarian alliances, occupation, and political miscalculation. If part one explained how the West lost Iran, part two explains how the region was remade in the decades that followed, and how all of it leads directly to the crisis we are watching now.

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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 explore how oil, empire, and superpower rivalry transformed Iran into a strategic battleground. Along the way we look at the choke points of global energy, the Suez crisis, the birth of the CIA’s regime-change playbook, and the corruption and inequality that ultimately ignited revolution. 

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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 Dorsey’s AI-driven job cuts and the explosion of “buy now, pay later” debt, we trace how AI is intensifying inequality, short-termism, and financial fragility. Is this the next great leap forward, or the beginning of a techno-feudal economy where a small elite extracts value at scale? We explore why equilibrium economics no longer makes sense, why evolution never waits for permission, and whether democracy can keep up with machines that learn faster than society can adapt

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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 crossroads into an economic cul-de-sac. A new generation is pushing back against corruption and state capture, and culture may be moving faster than politics, from packed derby stadiums in Belgrade to a runaway rom-com hit about a Croat-Serb wedding that’s quietly rewriting the story. If the Balkans can turn rivalry into cooperation, it could become one of Europe’s great comeback economies.

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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-separate towns and turning them into commuter satellites. Ireland has built a low-density model that forces people into cars, clogs villages with traffic, and makes the whole system fragile. Just 13% of Irish people live in apartments, compared to 46% across Europe, and the gap between where jobs and services are concentrated and where people actually live is now being paid for in time, congestion, and quality of life. So where do you look for a better model? Japan. We end in the Tokyo–Yokohama mega-region, 38 million people living densely, safely, and efficiently, and ask why Ireland keeps choosing a “rainbelt” version of American car sprawl, instead of building compact, mixed-use neighbourhoods that let people live near where they work, study and socialise.

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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 reacting, wiping value from software-heavy firms as investors realise that AI’s economic value will be measured the same way steam engines were: by how much labour they eliminate. We trace this moment through history, from the Industrial Revolution to the rise of the nerd after 1984, and ask what happens when an entire generation’s promised career suddenly looks like drudge work dressed up as genius. As 'vibe coding' replaces programming languages, and English replaces hieroglyphic code, technical skill is being commoditised at speed. AI is also stripping the human element out of markets, trading, and commerce itself, replacing noisy, emotional trading floors with silent machines trading in milliseconds. As technical skills lose their mystique, the economy may swing back toward the very things machines can’t replicate: empathy, creativity, comedy, poetry, and human judgment. 

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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 the crash, from banks lending 160% of deposits at the peak of the Celtic Tiger to barely 40% today, and why that matters far more than headline GDP figures. Drawing on history, from the silver mines of Potosí to Spain’s long decline, we explain why money is never neutral, why credit fuels growth in ways governments cannot replicate, and how multinational windfalls can mask a dangerously hollowed-out private economy. The result may look like prosperity, but it behaves more like stagnation.

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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), but they don’t directly control the quantity, because commercial banks create new money every time they approve a loan. From fractional reserve banking and the “pull” model of credit creation, to why Treasuries sit at the centre of the whole machine, we explain what central banks actually do Can Kevin Warsh tighten and cut at the same time? Markets moved on a single sentence. The politics want low rates. The plumbing wants discipline. Only one of those can win.

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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 original punishments. Dante put counterfeiters near the bottom of hell for a reason: mess with money and you mess with civilisation. We break down why Bitcoin’s fixed supply is exactly what stops it functioning as a currency, why volatility turns it into a hoarding game, and why “stablecoins” are less innovation than rebranded old finance. Crypto generates no income, finances no productive activity, and gives you no legal claim on anything, it’s a tradable gamble powered by belief, momentum, and the greater fool theory. We start with Dante, detour through Archimedes, and end with Isaac Newton, and the madness of crowds.

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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 aged 25–35 now have no partner, and the trend has worsened sharply in just the past decade. If coupling rates had simply held steady since 2017, there would be tens of millions fewer single people across the West. When the basic social unit shifts, everything built on top of it shifts too, housing demand, tax systems, politics, even how communities function. To explore the lived reality behind the data, we’re joined by comedian Aideen McQueen, whose hit show Waiting for Texto captures the emotional truth behind the statistics: the fatigue, the marketplace logic of dating, the compromise dilemma, and the strange modern paradox where people deeply want partnership, yet struggle to find a path to it.

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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 corporate law. Along with the quietly shocking stat that one in four people doubts their job is socially meaningful. We revisit the 1970s Irish banking strike, when the banks shut for months… and the economy kept moving on trust, IOUs, and community glue. If trust is money, and stories shape human behaviour, what happens when we start telling a better story, and actually act on it?

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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 directions. In this episode, we map the cold numbers behind Ireland’s exposure, exports, FDI, and the corporate tax windfall, and then pivot to a genuinely optimistic idea: using the last of the US windfall not just to cushion the future, but to build it. Think infrastructure now, and a Schumpeter-style startup fund that turns the country into an innovation machine before the sugar daddy’s money slows down.

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 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 default “safe” option. But now, with Trump openly threatening tariffs on anyone who dares to sell U.S. assets, the message is out in the open: America knows capital flight is the real threat. We start with an origin story, Henry Lowenfeld, the overlooked pioneer of diversification, and use it to decode what’s happening now: a long-overdue global rebalancing. Then we’re joined by financial strategist Sony Kapoor, who makes the case that U.S. assets are increasingly being priced not as a safe haven, but as a political risk, and that a weaker dollar, new hedging demand, and a search for opportunity outside America could reshape markets for a generation.

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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 assets worldwide. Then we go to Davos, where Mark Carney frames the moment as a “rupture, not a transition,” arguing that integration has become a weapon: tariffs as leverage, financial infrastructure as coercion, supply chains as vulnerabilities. We unpack the post-war deal: America as global policeman, underwriting security in Europe and East Asia, and what America got in return. Then we examine the new reality: tariffs on allies, closeness to rivals, and a Europe that may no longer accept subordination, with Greenland/“the Battle of Nuuk” emerging as the flashpoint that could make the break irreversible. Part one ends with the biggest question of all: if the unipolar world is over, what replaces it? Part two next week looks at Ireland, a country with a profound vested interest in the status quo, now facing its end.

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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 is Trump simply calling the bluff of a self-regarding central banking elite who’ve been pulling the levers of the economy from their marble citadels for 40 years? In this episode, we go deep on interest rates, the dollar, and the political economy of money, from Nero and Henry VIII to Lenin and Hitler, to explain why powerful leaders have always wanted to control the currency. We explore what “financial repression” really means, why Trump wants rates at 1%, and who wins (and loses) when money is made cheap. What if the central bankers aren’t the neutral technocrats they claim to be? What if independence has been more myth than reality, and quantitative easing has already blurred the lines between the Fed and the government?

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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 global alliances, leaving Europe disoriented and exposed. Drawing on history, geopolitics and economics, we ask whether this moment marks the true end of Pax Americana, and whether it’s permanent. Then we turn to the other pressure building quietly beneath the surface: debt. With sluggish growth, soaring deficits and rising bond yields, are the bond vigilantes about to make a comeback? From France to the US, we unpack why fiscal stress, not inflation, may be the real economic story of the next two years.

Bonus segment: In partnership with IBEC, we look ahead to Ireland’s EU presidency and ask how Irish business can position itself in a world defined by geopolitical fracture, fiscal strain and intensifying competition, from AI and infrastructure to talent, trade and resilience.

History, power, money, and the fault lines that matter next.

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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 booming while consumer confidence collapses. The top 10 stocks now make up 40% of the S&P 500, profits are rising six times faster than wages, and young unemployment is running at 8.5% while older workers stack second jobs. GDP says “fine.” Lived reality says otherwise. Then we turn to energy, the thing that still prices everything. With oil hovering around $60 a barrel, sanctions wobbling, OPEC under strain, and Iran emerging as the real wildcard, we ask what happens next. Oil expert Carol Nackley joins us to explain why Venezuela’s reserves don’t mean cheap fuel, why Iran could flip the market overnight, and why political chaos makes long-term energy investment almost impossible. This episode is about imbalance, in money, markets, power, and psychology, and why when trust in institutions cracks, the consequences show up everywhere: in your wages, your bills, and the price you pay at the pump.

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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 us from Trinidad with jaw-dropping numbers: Caribbean states racked up debts to Venezuela worth 20–50% of their GDP, many of them “off the books,” even as 8 million Venezuelans fled their country. While leaders preached morality, they were bathing in subsidised oil. If Venezuelan oil disappears, and U.S. power reasserts itself, Cuba loses its lifeline. Could that trigger regime collapse? Could stability finally return to Venezuela? Or are we entering a new era where great powers carve up weak states and call it humanitarian? Think Monroe Doctrine 2.0, only faster, harder, and happening right now.

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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 protectorate where Washington negotiates directly with whoever actually holds power,the military and the Chavista elite, while keeping a “second round” of force on the table. From China’s billions now stuck at the back of the queue, to the return of 17th-century-style capitalism where corporations and states move as one, we explore what Venezuelans, Colombians, and the wider region fear comes next. If Maduro is gone… who’s really in charge now — and for how long?

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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 Ireland’s year ahead, from capacity crunches to a society shaped by contentment, not ambition. And what if Troy Parrott brings us to the World Cup, could football give us the only real growth story this year?

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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 change in the air? And if Venezuela falls, is Cuba next? Latin America may be Washington’s backyard, but it’s about to become the world’s front line.

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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 the invention of a shared written language to state exams, from imperial bureaucracy to modern supply chains, we trace how China built power by consolidating at home while quietly extending economic influence abroad. This is a story of conquest, of control, and why the West still struggles to understand a system that values internal cohesion over imperial adventure.

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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 to flow from China to Europe; paper, gunpowder, money, insurance, trade associations, even early globalisation itself. The same networks that spread innovation also carried the Black Death, halving Europe’s population and accidentally laying the economic foundations for the Renaissance. From biological warfare to free movement of people and goods, this is the story of how a nomadic empire reshaped the global economy, and why globalization is far older, darker, and stranger than we like to admit.

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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 farm in 20 years? From floating turbines to fiscal unions, Dutch perpetual bonds to data centres in the Burren, we break down how wind could be Ireland’s next IDA moment, if we can overcome our engineering phobia and stop thinking like a museum.

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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 croissants? From Russian disinformation to Chinese green tech dominance, we break down the numbers behind Europe’s strategic decline, and what Ireland needs to wake up to before it’s too late.

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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 passed €2,000 a month, groceries are up 16% in a year, childcare can cost over €1,000 monthly, and still we’re told the economy is “booming.” Inspired by Michael Green’s viral Substack and Kyla Scanlon’s “vibecession,” we unpack the growing chasm between income and cost, and how it’s fuelling backlash, burnout, and political blowback from New York to Newbridge.

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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 who mapped Ireland in 13 months and turned land into an asset class. His Down Survey redrew Ireland and created the blueprint for colonialism, capitalism and the straight-line borders that still ignite conflict from Central Asia to the Middle East. We follow the rulers, the rebellions, the dispossession and the economics behind every “line in the sand.”

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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, risks turning into a mausoleum economy with great croissants, beautiful cities, and a shrinking industrial base. We ask does China’s engineering mindset can deliver both stunning bridges and harsh social controls? Does a world of tariffs, security fears and cyber-fragility forces us to rethink who we let run the show: the builders or the barristers?

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.