The David McWilliams Podcast

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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