The David McWilliams Podcast

Broadcasting from the Aran Islands, where the population has crashed from 48,000 to 3,000, we look at what may be the biggest data point of 2026: for the first time ever, the human race is shrinking. The global fertility rate has dropped to 1.8, below the 2.1 needed to replace ourselves, and of 236 countries studied, 219 are in decline. The twist is that it’s happening fastest among poorer, less-educated women in poorer countries, which wrecks the old rule that you have to get rich before you get old. So is modernity itself the culprit, and could tradition stage a comeback? Plus, why AI scepticism sent investors rushing back into bonds this week. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Live from New York, with a radical idea: treat the Irish diaspora as our greatest soft power asset. Every Irish child costs the state about €500,000 to educate, and America pockets the return when they emigrate. So scrap tax for two years for anyone coming home, and give citizenship to a third generation of Irish Americans. Then the midterms, four weeks out. Trump is on 33%, the lowest of any midterm president since 1974, petrol is back above $4, and markets give Democrats a 65% shot at both chambers. A blue wave makes him a lame duck. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ireland’s budget surplus is €9 billion, but the Department of Finance reckons €23 billion of the €34 billion in corporation tax is transient AI-boom money. Strip it out and we’re looking at a €13-14 billion deficit, heading for €20 billion by 2029. Meanwhile we’ve just pumped €7.4 billion of tax cuts and handouts into an economy already at full employment. Recorded live from New York, where financiers are getting twitchy about an AI bubble: US long-term rates are creeping towards 6%, and superscalers now gobble up 17% of the capital the Treasury needs. We ask whether Ireland is Norway or Nigeria when it comes to managing a windfall, why a hard budget focuses the mind, and why a rotating Taoiseach and a split Department of Finance add up to ordering two tiramisus because the voucher is free. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Calouste Gulbenkian never drilled a well, never owned a rig, and still died the richest man in the world. We follow the Armenian fixer from Constantinople who took 5% of everything: the Turkish Petroleum Company, Royal Dutch Shell, even a deal with Stalin paid in Hermitage art. His maps shaped modern Iraq and left the Kurds sitting on top of the oil, and his split of upstream, refining and distribution still defines Big Oil today. Plus why diesel is spiking, what a 100 million barrel release really does, and why this misanthropic networker gave his fortune to art while today's billionaires build spaceships. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dublin prices have fallen 5.2% last year, the biggest drop since 2014, and the buyer's strike is real. The premium over asking has shrunk from 7% to 2.6%, and the average couple on €108k can borrow just enough for a €484k home when a three-bed semi in Dublin asks €635k. We break down why: young people are maxed out, we're still building 1980s houses for a 2020s population, and the force driving prices this time is people, not credit like in 2008. Plus the Spanish eviction story that had Madrid in uproar, and why "the cure for high prices is high prices." Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.