Power and Plutocracy: Have we Reached Peak Billionaire?
5 November 2024 - 33 minsIn this episode, we delve into the essence of power ahead of the American election. What happens when the warrior, priestly, and merchant castes converge—and who ends up on top? We explore how the modern United States exemplifies this ancient struggle through its billionaires, technocrats, and military-industrial complex. With billionaires investing nearly $700 million into the election, we ask: does this solidify their dominance, or could we be nearing a tipping point, a "peak billionaire" era? From McKinley's front-porch politics to Roosevelt's crackdown on the robber barons, history has lessons for today's plutocrats. Could the pendulum swing against them again?
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Series Episodes
The Greatest Windfall Britain Ever Wasted
Norway turned North Sea oil into $2 trillion in the bank. Britain turned it into tax cuts, unemployment cheques and a housing bubble. We unpack the tale of two oil finds, why one country nailed it and the other blew it, and what it says about how nations really make, and lose, their fortunes. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
41 mins
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Alexander Hamilton: How a Caribbean Orphan Built America
250 years on, we ask the question: would America even exist without Alexander Hamilton? We tell the story of the French-speaking outsider who created the dollar, faced down the states, and set the world's biggest economy in motion, before being murdered in one of history's strangest duels. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
38 mins
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Ireland's Silent Sell Off and the Employee Ownership Solution
Every day that the Irish Financial Service Centre is open, they're selling an Irish business into foreign ownership. Since 2018, overseas acquirers have spent over €100 billion buying up Irish companies. I'm joined by Alan Coleman to look at why this is happening. We look at employee ownership trusts as a solution already working in the UK and Canada, the tax barriers holding it back in Ireland, and the surprising historical Irish precedent for the idea. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
31 mins
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The Death of the American Dream
SpaceX just IPO'd, surged, and torched billions of small investors. It's the new American economy. From prediction markets to crypto to day-trading teens, we look at how the US quietly turned itself into the world's biggest casino, and why young Americans are gambling because they've given up on working. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
32 mins
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The Man Who Broke the Global Economy
Alan Greenspan just died at 100, and he might be the most consequential person of the last 30 years that nobody talks about. We unpack the wild story of the jazz clarinettist turned Fed chairman, the Ayn Rand cult he came from, the "Greenspan Put" that quietly rigged Wall Street, and why his fingerprints are all over Ireland's 2008 crash. Plus a strange historical twist: was Alan Greenspan related to the Jewish teenager whose shooting triggered Kristallnacht? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
41 mins
30 June Finished
Why Did Brazil Never Make It?
The country of the future has been stuck in the future for 100 years. We dig into Brazil's wild economic story; slavery, the secret "whitening" immigration policy that sent millions of Italians south, and why Brazilian football carries the weight of a whole nation's identity. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
35 mins
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