The David McWilliams Podcast

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.