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PODCAST

The David McWilliams Podcast

David McWilliams & John Davis

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 in

news & politics

All Episodes

42:47

The AI Bubble: Boom, Bust & Baked in Nimbin

The David McWilliams Podcast ·

2025/10/28

Somewhere between a biker bar in Nimbin and a data centre in Virginia, we try to make sense of the biggest capital boom in history. The AI revolution has garnered $400 billion of spending this year alone, nearly half of all US growth. What if it’s all built on industrial lettuces, tech that expires faster than it earns? From NVIDIA’s chip race to Meta’s debt-fuelled data farms, the same story keeps repeating: speculation first, profits later. Live from Australia, we trace how bubbles drive

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38:37

The Lost Sailors: From Aboriginals to Schumpeter

The David McWilliams Podcast ·

2025/10/23

Deep in an Australian rainforest, surrounded by birds older than any cathedral, We unpack one of the greatest mysteries in human history, how the first people to sail across open seas, 60,000 years ago, became a civilisation that forgot how to sail. The Aboriginal Australians, the oldest continuous culture on Earth, arrived when Europe was still under ice. They built languages older than Latin, mapped deserts the size of continents, and thrived for 99.7% of Australia’s human history before a single

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41:47

The Land of Opportunity Down Under: Australia

The David McWilliams Podcast ·

2025/10/21

Cycling through Brisbane in the heat, we've found a country that hasn’t had a recession in nearly half a century; a statistical miracle in modern capitalism. Australia’s economy has grown steadily since the 1980s, powered by the luck of geography and the grit of immigration. Iron ore alone earns more than €100 billion a year, and one in three residents were born abroad, making it the most immigrant-driven economy in the rich world. Its central bank floats the currency to stay competitive, its

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54:43

Saudi the Kingmaker: Gaza, Trump & a New Middle East...

The David McWilliams Podcast ·

2025/10/16

Live from Christchurch, literally tomorrow, we bring on Andrew Maxwell, fresh off stage in Riyadh, to ground-truth the social shift you won’t see in think-tank PDFs: 8k-seat comedy arenas, mixed audiences, and a culture moving at startup speed. With approximately 17% of the world’s proven crude reserves, a sovereign fund near $900bn, and a population that’s 65% under 35, Riyadh can bankroll outcomes, including a Gaza deal. Female labour-force participation has doubled since 2016, internet use is

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36:44

The Behavioural Budget: How Tax Shapes Us

The David McWilliams Podcast ·

2025/10/14

We promise this isn’t another boring budget breakdown! This week, we’re asking a bigger question: what if taxation isn’t really about raising money, but about changing behaviour? With Ireland awash in corporate tax revenue, the old logic of “tax to fund spending” doesn’t quite hold. So, should we start using taxes to shape how people act, from derelict sites to carbon emissions, and borrow the money we need instead? We explore how Ireland’s unique position in global finance could make it a testing

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42:38

The Art of Creation with The Edge - Part Two

The David McWilliams Podcast ·

2025/10/09

We’re back with The Edge for part two of our conversation. This time, on the creative mind itself, we talk about what connects the artist and the entrepreneur: the instinct to imagine something that doesn’t exist and make it real. From James Joyce’s Volta Cinema to U2’s Berlin reinvention, we explore how creativity and risk are two sides of the same coin, and why failure, not success, is what really drives innovation. The Edge opens up about reinventing old songs, finding confidence in chaos, and

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44:17

The Art of Creation with The Edge

The David McWilliams Podcast ·

2025/10/07

Live from the basement, we sit down with The Edge, the musician who wanted to be a scientist, to talk about the spark that connects rock bands and startups. From U2’s early ambition to his work with Endeavour, The Edge shares how curiosity, mentorship, and a willingness to fail can turn creativity into success. We explore why Ireland can’t rely on multinationals forever, how to build a real culture of innovation, and why begrudgery has held us back for too long. Hosted on Acast. See

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46:20

What is Radical Politics?

The David McWilliams Podcast ·

2025/10/02

We like to think of the centre as steady, sensible, and grounded, but what if the “centre” is actually the most radical place in politics right now? The real fault line in modern politics isn’t about tax or spending, it’s about culture. Onn those cultural questions the political class has drifted miles away from the people they claim to represent. In Britain, nearly9 in 10 peoplethink immigrants should adapt to local customs, yet most MPs don’t. In Germany, it’s the same. In Ireland, the gap is

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36:33

Culture Wars in the West, Alliances in the East

The David McWilliams Podcast ·

2025/09/30

While the West burns itself out on culture wars, the East is quietly stitching together something bigger. This is the age of geo-economics, where oil, factories, and sheer population size matter more than headlines. On Russia’s border, the numbers tell the story: 4.5 million Russians facing 107 million Chinese. Add India into the mix and you see the outline of an alliance with the power to redraw the map. Meanwhile, Europe feels tired, America feels divided, and the old certainties of Pax Americana

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38:14

Who Owns the Flag? From the American Revolution to...

The David McWilliams Podcast ·

2025/09/25

We’re in New York this week, celebrating my mam’s 90th birthday and launchingThe History of Moneyin the U.S., but the backdrop is America’s deepening culture war. With the 250th anniversary of the Revolution looming, both liberals and MAGA are fighting to “own” the flag, the story, and the soul of America. We dive into Ken Burns’s new PBS seriesThe American Revolution, the forgotten role of General O’Hara (an Irishman who surrendered for the British), and why 75% of Black troops fought for the

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48:21

The Economics of Golf

The David McWilliams Podcast ·

2025/09/22

What doesgolftell us about money, power, and the way economies work? From billion-dollar sponsorship deals to the rise of LIVGolf, from Tiger Woods to Trump’sgolfcourses, the fairways ofgolfare lined with lessons about globalisation, soft power, and the business of status.In this episode, we tee off on the economics ofgolf, how a game that looks leisurely on the surface is actually a high-stakes arena of geopolitics, big business, and class.Along the way we explore why Ireland punches above its

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36:52

From Cod to Culture: What Inishmore Teaches Us About...

The David McWilliams Podcast ·

2025/09/18

Between 250,000-300,000 tourists land on the island every year, 2,500 a day in summer, and yet it still feels authentic, alive, and deeply Irish. In this episode, we ask: how do remote places like Inishmore thrive in today’s economy, while once-wealthy regions like France’s Île de Ré struggle with emptying out? We dig into the wild history of cod and salt (the currency of empires), why Ireland salted beef instead of fish, and how the Aran Islands are now punching above their weight in the

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34:57

Could the GAA Solve Ireland’s Housing Crisis?

The David McWilliams Podcast ·

2025/09/16

What if the solution to Ireland’s housing crisis has been sitting on our doorstep all along? We dive into the Danish model of cooperative housing, where 7% of Danes live in co-ops, and a full third of Copenhageners do too,and explore how the GAA, with its 2,200 clubs and pristine community pitches in every village, could spearhead something similar here. Forget developer margins and speculative bubbles: in Denmark, a co-op share might cost €70–100k, with monthly housing costs around €800, compared

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37:47

Deepfakes, Big Tech, and the Coming AI Crash?

The David McWilliams Podcast ·

2025/09/11

AI investment is exploding: the “Magnificent Seven” of Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Meta, Tesla, and NVIDIA, are ploughing almost 7% of US GDP into AI and data centres. That’s the same scale as the US housing boom in 2006, and greater than the dot-com bubble at its peak. Today, just seven firms make up 34% of the S&P 500, the highest concentration in history. Earnings per share in these companies grew 37% last year, compared to just 6% in the rest of the index. But history warns us, RCA in

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39:05

France on the Brink: Debt, Drama, and a Possible...

The David McWilliams Podcast ·

2025/09/09

Broadcast from Île de Ré, we dive into France’s mounting fiscal mess and political paralysis. With Macron a lame-duck, bond markets charging Paris more than Athens, and a nationwide strike looming, we ask: could Europe’s cornerstone become its weakest link? We unpack France’s towering state-and-semi-state debts, why Japan can print and Paris can’t, the ECB’s “will they/won’t they” backstop if Le Pen takes power, and how a sovereignist turn could trigger a rewrite of France’s constitution, goodbye

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46:27

Economics in a Tent: Live at Electric Picnic 2025

The David McWilliams Podcast ·

2025/09/04

We took economics to a music festival, and somehow packed the tent. In this Electric Picnic highlights episode from Mindfield, we rock up bleary-eyed and buzzing, then dive straight into the big stuff: what Trump’s assault on America’s institutions means for money, markets, and the rest of us. We map the new super-cycle from post-war social democracy to Reagan-Thatcher finance, to today’s populist reboot, and why we think the US is flirting with a fiscal, monetary, and dollar crunch. Closer to home,

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40:49

Is America The Richest Third World Country?

The David McWilliams Podcast ·

2025/09/02

Is the US drifting into Peronism? We trace the playbook, tariffs and import substitution, national champions, censorship-by-intimidation, and a war on independent institutions, and map it onto Trump’s America: sacking a Fed governor, menacing J-Powell, firing the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, deploying the National Guard, and the Treasury taking a slice of Intel. Along the way, we tell the family story that makes the point better than any chart: two Italian brothers leave Lombardy in 1950,

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36:52

Germany, 10 Years After “Wir Schaffen Das”, What...

The David McWilliams Podcast ·

2025/08/28

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 this”). Today, Germany has over 3.4 million asylum seekers, about 4% of its population, and politics, society, and culture have been transformed. In this episode, we dive into what really happened over the last decade. We talk with historian Katja Hoyer about the numbers, the culture clashes, the rise of the AfD from a fringe party to polling at

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33:56

The Nationalisation of the New Home Market

The David McWilliams Podcast ·

2025/08/26

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 locked in by government deals. That means up to 80–85% of new builds are being bought by the state, at an average price of €382,000 per unit, while wages lag far behind rising house prices, which jumped 7.8% last year. So who’s being pushed out? First-time buyers. Instead of solving the housing crisis, the state is inflating prices, nationalising

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41:14

Ukraine at the Crossroads: From Donetsk to the...

The David McWilliams Podcast ·

2025/08/21

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 displaced. But while the Kremlin clings to a symbolic scrap of territory, we explore whether Ukraine’s true future lies not in NATO membership but in becoming what political economist Harold Laswell once called a “garrison state.” What does that mean? Think of countries like Israel, Taiwan, South Korea, or even Finland in 1940: highly

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