The David McWilliams Podcast

Live at Kilkenomics, we welcome Roscommon's own economics star Kyla Scanlon author of In This Economy for a fast, funny, and razor-sharp tour of where money and mood collide. We get into her “vibecession” idea on why feelings beat spreadsheets, the AI splash that’s propping up markets, and why America is drifting from a work economy to a casino economy. Why are unprofitable companies dominating the stock market? What happens when a whole generation treats the economy like a casino? And how did social media become both the marketplace and the message? From America’s leveraged bet on tech to Ireland’s own Gen Z drift, we follow the vibes, the volatility, and the very weird definition of adulthood emerging in 2025. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A tech bubble always feels rational until it doesn’t, as Wall Street fuses with Silicon Valley and the entire American economy becomes a single hyper-leveraged bet on AI, we trace the early tremors: falling job numbers, concentration of risk, a market propped up by story over profit. The real shock comes at home, Ireland’s new Future 40 report quietly maps out a country sleepwalking into decades of slower growth, soaring age-related costs, and a housing crunch that will outlive an entire generation. The proposed solution currently is to import more workers into a market that can’t house the people already here. We break down the numbers, the politics, and the intergenerational showdown now shaping Ireland’s future, a collision of tech mania, demographic reality, and a state betting tomorrow on the backs of the young. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Twenty years ago, The Pope’s Children changed how Ireland saw itself; a country high on credit, confidence, and Celtic Tiger ambition. Two decades later, we’re back where it all began: the suburbs, the shopping centres, the bouncy castles and breakfast rolls that built a new middle class. We revisit the characters who defined an era, Decklanders, RoboPaddy, Breakfast Roll Man, and the forces that reshaped Irish life: class, credit, and cultural reinvention. From boom to bust to boom again, we ask what really changed, and what just got a rebrand. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Australia is the country Argentina should’ve been, and the country Ireland could become. Seventy years ago, Argentina and Australia stood side by side as the world’s great hopes, rich in land, resources, and ambition. Today, one is a model of steady prosperity, the other a warning wrapped in inflation and political theatre. We dig into how two nations with the same starting line took radically different paths: Australia’s pragmatism versus Argentina’s populism. From Perón to protectionism, from housing booms to resource riches, it’s a lesson in how economic choices shape destiny, and why Ireland should listen carefully before history starts to rhyme again. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As Ireland square up to the All Blacks at the weekend, we are all New Zealand this week, podcasting from the edge of the world, Richie McCaw's old stomping Christchurch, New Zealand. We explore why the world’s richest men are turning NZ's quiet and beautiful South Island into their apocalypse insurance policy. Peter Thiel has bought hundreds of acres near Lake Wānaka, joining a wave of tech billionaires building bunkers at the bottom of the planet. They call it resilience; it looks a lot like retreat. From Victorian settlers fleeing moral decay to modern tech evangelists escaping the society they built, New Zealand has always drawn utopians convinced the world is ending somewhere else. We trace the country’s shift from colonial outpost to libertarian life raft, unpacking The Sovereign Individual, the book that shaped Silicon Valley’s doomsday economics. A journey through empire, ideology, and the strange new faith that the future belongs only to those who can afford to escape. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 innovation, and destruction, from railroads to radio to AI. They ask who really benefits when Silicon Valley welcomes the bubble, Wall Street fears it, and democracies are left to clean up the crash. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 European set foot here. Then, in just decades, 90% of them were gone, wiped out not by conquest, but by microbes. From this collision of worlds, we explore what makes societies innovate, why isolation freezes progress while connection multiplies it. Drawing on Harvard anthropologist Joseph Henrich’s idea of the collective brain, they trace how collaboration fuels invention, from the first tools to AI. The episode arcs from the Aboriginal sailors who crossed 100 miles of open water before anyone else, to the Nobel Prize winners studying the alchemy of innovation, and ends with Ireland’s own late awakening from creative isolation. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 politicians spend sparingly but smartly, and its cities remain among the most liveable on Earth. Yet beneath the sunshine and swagger lies a tension: record house prices, soaring costs, and a nation riding two horses at once, one facing Washington, the other Beijing. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 near-universal, and Vision 2030 is pointing trillions in capex at tourism, sport, and tech. We dig into how a Saudi–Egypt–Pakistan triangle (money, manpower, nukes) changes the bargaining set, why normalisation with Israel would be a geopolitical earthquake, and what a “phase two” looks like. We also hit the shelved India–Gulf–Med trade corridor, Qatar’s broker role with Hamas, and why Europe’s mostly a spectator in a multipolar game. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 ground for a new kind of economic thinking, one where the budget becomes less about arithmetic, and more about incentives, behaviour, and human nature. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 what it means to stay curious for decades. We also dig into AI and the future of music, asking whether algorithms can ever truly create something new, or if the human imagination will always win out. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 acast.com/privacy for more information.

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, nearly 9 in 10 people think immigrants should adapt to local customs, yet most MPs don’t. In Germany, it’s the same. In Ireland, the gap is smaller but still real. On economics, tax, spending, capitalism, the public and politicians broadly agree yet on culture, they’re worlds apart. With Financial Times' John Burn-Murdoch, we dig into the numbers from Ireland, the UK, Germany and Denmark, and ask: if the centre has abandoned the centre, who’s really radical anymore?What is Radical Politics? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 begin to fade. The question isn’t just who holds the power now, it’s whether we’ll even recognise the world that emerges next. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We’re in New York this week, celebrating my mam’s 90th birthday and launching The History of Money in the U.S., but the backdrop is America’s deepening culture 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 series The 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 Crown. We reflect on Monica Lewinsky’s powerful talk on shame in the internet age, before turning to the fallout from Charlie Kirk’s killing, how one event is being weaponised to fuel division, echoing darker moments of history like Kristallnacht. And we look ahead: could the 2026 World Cup become the liberals’ unlikely answer to MAGA pageantry? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What does golf tell us about money, power, and the way economies work? From billion-dollar sponsorship deals to the rise of LIV Golf, from Tiger Woods to Trump’s golf courses, the fairways of golf are lined with lessons about globalisation, soft power, and the business of status. In this episode, we tee off on the economics of golf, 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 weight in the sport, why golf courses matter for land use and housing, and why golf has always been about more than chasing a little white ball around a field. This is a special bonus episode from Sky Sports. Watch all 3 days of The Ryder Cup exclusively live on Sky Sports. Upgrade today or Stream live with NOW - Available without a contract Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 global experience economy. From lobster-pot pubs to the death of distance, we explore what makes people pay not just for goods and services, but for memory, tribe, and authenticity. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 to a private flat at €400k and €1,200 rent. We talk about the power of collective ownership, intergenerational communities, and why housing is really about dignity, not speculation. Along the way, we get into Jim Gavin’s presidential bid, Fianna Fáil’s GAA connection, and why our presidency has become more like Ireland’s Got Talent than a serious constitutional role. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 the 1920s, dot-coms in the 1990s, that transformative technologies can change the world while destroying fortunes. The question now: is AI the next revolution, or the next bubble waiting to burst? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 Fifth Republic, hello Sixth. Along the way: Anglo-Saxon doom-mongering, De Gaulle’s Jupiterian legacy, contagion math, and why life in “paradise” can still feel like purgatory. Big stakes, bigger history, and a very French cliff-hanger. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.