The David McWilliams Podcast
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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...
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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 real...
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", th...
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...
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 mech...
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 unp...
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...
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 o...
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 fi...
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...
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 a...
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 g...
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 epi...
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 risin...
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 create...
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 wideni...
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 m...
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 shockwav...
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 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...
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 N...
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 ups...
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...
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 e...
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. Wh...
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? Wh...
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 cry...
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 W...
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 t...
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 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...
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 o...
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...
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, compari...
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...
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 th...
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 realit...
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...
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...
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,...
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 reth...