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 Behavioural Budget: How Tax Shapes Us
We promise this isn’t another boring budget breakdown! This week, we’re asking a bigger question: what if taxation isn’t really about raising money, b...
The Art of Creation with The Edge - Part Two
We’re back with The Edge for part two of our conversation. This time, on the creative mind itself, we talk about what connects the artist and the entr...
The Art of Creation with The Edge
Live from the basement, we sit down with The Edge, the musician who wanted to be a scientist, to talk about the spark that connects rock bands and sta...
What is Radical Politics?
We like to think of the centre as steady, sensible, and grounded, but what if the “centre” is actually the most radical place in politics right now? T...
Culture Wars in the West, Alliances in the East
While the West burns itself out on culture wars, the East is quietly stitching together something bigger. This is the age of geo-economics, where oil,...
Who Owns the Flag? From the American Revolution to Charlie Kirk
We’re in New York this week, celebrating my mam’s 90th birthday and launching The History of Money in the U.S., but the backdrop is America’s deepenin...
The Economics of Golf
What does golf tell us about money, power, and the way economies work? From billion-dollar sponsorship deals to the rise of LIV Golf, from Tiger Woods...
From Cod to Culture: What Inishmore Teaches Us About the Experience Economy
Between 250,000-300,000 tourists land on the island every year, 2,500 a day in summer, and yet it still feels authentic, alive, and deeply Irish. In t...
Could the GAA Solve Ireland’s Housing Crisis?
What if the solution to Ireland’s housing crisis has been sitting on our doorstep all along? We dive into the Danish model of cooperative housing, whe...
Deepfakes, Big Tech, and the Coming AI Crash?
AI investment is exploding: the “Magnificent Seven” of Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Meta, Tesla, and NVIDIA, are ploughing almost 7% of US GDP in...
France on the Brink: Debt, Drama, and a Possible Sixth Republic
Broadcast from Île de Ré, we dive into France’s mounting fiscal mess and political paralysis. With Macron a lame-duck, bond markets charging Paris mor...
Economics in a Tent: Live at Electric Picnic 2025
We took economics to a music festival, and somehow packed the tent. In this Electric Picnic highlights episode from Mindfield, we rock up bleary-eyed...
Is America The Richest Third World Country?
Is the US drifting into Peronism? We trace the playbook, tariffs and import substitution, national champions, censorship-by-intimidation, and a war on...
Germany, 10 Years After “Wir Schaffen Das”, What Really Happened? with Katja Hoyer
Ten years ago, Angela Merkel opened Germany’s doors to more than 1.1 million asylum seekers in a single year with the words “Wir schaffen das” (“We ca...
The Nationalisation of the New Home Market
The state has quietly become the biggest buyer of new homes. In fact, builders like Cairn Homes now have forward sales of nearly €946 million, much of...
Ukraine at the Crossroads: From Donetsk to the Garrison State
After nearly 11 years of war, Putin’s maximalist demands have shrunk to a sliver of land in Donetsk, a pyrrhic victory after countless lives lost and...
Ireland is a Hostage to Fortune
Have we caught a case of Dutch Disease? Ireland’s dependence on foreign multinationals looks less like a golden goose and more like Japanese knotweed,...
America’s Dutch Disease: How Debt Became the World’s Hottest Export
We’ve always known Dutch Disease as what happens when a country strikes oil or gas and accidentally hollows out the rest of its economy. But what if t...
From The Godfather to the Blockchain: How Easy Money Seduced Wall Street (and the White House)
We’ve always said to understand the economy, you have to understand human nature, and nothing reveals that better than watching the biggest players do...
Japan: Lost in Translation Part Two
We all love a boom story, until it turns into a 40‑year hangover. In 1995, Japan’s nominal GDP hit its high‑water mark. It took until the 2020s to get...
Japan: From Feudal Isolation to Economic Superpower
This week marks 80 years since the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and we’re taking a deep dive into Japan’s extraordinary economic story....
Generation Rent: How Housing Costs Are Exporting Ireland's Future
This week we talk to Matthew Ruddy, a young Dublin entrepreneur who did everything right - built his first business at 17, worked alongside the lads a...
Did Europe Just Surrender to Trump?
Not so fast! We unpack the surprise EU-US trade deal that has everyone shouting sellout but we see it differently. In this episode, we take a deeper l...
When the West Woke Up: How Yugoslavia Fell Apart
This week, we take you back to the final years of Yugoslavia, a country that exploded into one of the bloodiest wars Europe has seen since WWII. We tr...
Why Ireland Must Rethink Its Economic Future; Fast
In this week’s episode, we dive headfirst into the economic storm clouds gathering over Ireland, and the urgent need to act before we get soaked. We e...
The Ghosts of Yugoslavia: Borders, Bankers & Balkan Ghosts
In this episode, we dive headfirst into one of Europe’s most brutal and under-discussed chapters: the collapse of Yugoslavia. Live from Croatia, where...
Can We Cope With This Level of Immigration?
This week on the podcast, we take on the two biggest issues shaping our future: immigration and housing. We begin with the looming threat of U.S. tari...
Who Wants to Live Forever? The Economics of Immortality, Tech Bros & Tír na nÓg
This week, we start with Oasis and end in Silicon Valley, via Tír na nÓg. We’re talking about the economics of not dying, and how tech billionaires ar...
Trieste and the City of the Future
Trieste is a city that’s belonged to everyone, and no one. This week, we go walking through a place that’s been Austrian, Italian, Yugoslav, and, at o...
Who Killed the Living City?
After travelling through Montreal, Bilbao, and Vilnius, cities alive with colour, sound, and soul, I returned home and felt the contrast sharply. Dubl...
Content, Culture & the Bottom Line: How Finance is Killing the Avant-Garde
Are we living through the death of innovation? We’re back in HQ asking a tough question: has culture stagnated, and if so, is economics to blame? We e...
Has the Balance of Global Power Just Shifted to Israel?
Has Israel just become the undisputed power in the Middle East? After a lightning-fast 12-day conflict, oil prices fell instead of spiking, Iran backe...
The Dollar, the Ape & the End of an Empire
Live from a packed GAA hall at the Dalkey Book Festival, this episode tackles one of the wildest questions in economics: how did humans, flimsy, anxi...
Memoirs of an Arab Jew
In this powerful episode recorded at the Dalkey Book Festival, we sit down with Israeli historian Avi Shlaim, whose memoir The Memoirs of an Arab Jew ...
The Islamic Enlightenment
Tensions in the Middle East are escalating, following Israel’s surprise attack on targets across Iran on Friday, and ensuing strikes between the two p...
The Hanseatic League: Europe’s First Free Trade Zone
Forget Brussels, the first European Union was built by medieval merchants, not politicians. This week, we dive into the Hanseatic League: a loose alli...
Will America’s Debt Crash the Global Economy?
When Jamie Dimon warns that the U.S. bond market could "crack," it’s time to listen. This week, we dive into America’s mounting debt crisis, with U.S....
From Bolsheviks to Bolt: The Tallinnovation Nation
We’re on the road again, this time reporting from Vilnius, Lithuania, in the heart of Europe’s Bloodlands. Don’t be fooled by the history of war and t...
Creativity in the Cul-de-Sac: Why the Suburbs Won
Back home at HQ, we stretch our legs and dive into something huge hiding in plain sight: Ireland is now the most educated country in the world. But wh...
Spain’s Miracle Economy: What They Got Right (That We Didn’t) with Joe Haslam
We're back in Spain, and I’ve got questions. Why is Spain growing faster than Germany, France, and even the US? Why can they build high-speed rail for...