Episodes

  • A Letter from Africa with Simon Kuper

    A Letter from Africa with Simon Kuper
    May 13 2025
    This week I'm in South Africa on a book and speaking tour and am chatting at the Franschoek Literary Festival, so we are all South Africa today. A country of contradictions, rich in resources, vibrant in culture, yet S.A. is held back by inequality, corruption, and the long shadow of apartheid. In this episode, we explore its uneasy present and remarkable past: from Mandela’s legacy to Elon Musk’s childhood, from empire and race to why Donald Trump has fixated on white Afrikaners. We travel through Cape Town and Johannesburg, unpacking it all with FT journalist Simon Kuper, and along the way, we encounter pencil tests, Springboks, slabs of the Berlin Wall, and the political ghosts of the Cold War. Is South Africa being used, once again, as a pawn in someone else’s game?

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    51 mins
  • Inflation for Losers with Mark Blyth

    Inflation for Losers with Mark Blyth
    May 8 2025
    Broadcast from a wine-soaked table in Italy’s Valle di Comino, ancestral home of Ireland’s chipper dynasties, this episode covers everything from Irish-Italian football matches and Elvis impersonators to the far more serious threat inflation poses to liberal democracy. We chat to political economist Mark Blyth about his new book Inflation: A Guide for Users and Losers, unpicking why prices stay stubbornly high, who inflation hits hardest, and how it quietly fuels everything from MAGA to Farage. Is inflation just economics, or is it the force tearing apart the political centre ground? And is the UK a basket case… or just ahead of the curve?

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    42 mins
  • How Canada Became the Anti-Trump Blueprint

    How Canada Became the Anti-Trump Blueprint
    May 6 2025
    This week, we talk about the most unexpected political shift of the year, Canada’s sudden transformation into the liberal world’s new playbook. We unpack how Mark Carney, once a Davos technocrat, won an election by turning it into a referendum on Trump… and won big. Along the way, we explore nationalism (the decent kind), what Trump gets wrong about trade, and why standing up to bullies actually works. Plus, we chat with Evan Solomon, now an MP in Carney’s new government, about what Canadians really want, what’s next for their economy, and how sometimes, all it takes to wake up a country is a common enemy.

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    43 mins
  • Slowing Down in an Age of Acceleration with Elif Shafak

    Slowing Down in an Age of Acceleration with Elif Shafak
    May 1 2025
    This week, we take a breath. In a world spinning faster than a speedcubing final, we step away from bond yields and geopolitics and lean into something more human: imagination. We swap global crises for quiet joys, from a Rubik’s cube competition in Wicklow to the power of storytelling in uncertain times. As we always say, economics is about life and today we are joined by bestselling novelist Elif Shafak, to explore how fiction helps us make sense of chaos, how literature bridges the political and the personal, and why sometimes the most radical act in a crisis-ridden world is to imagine differently.

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    34 mins
  • The Art of Taxation: How a Crisis Could Save Your City

    The Art of Taxation: How a Crisis Could Save Your City
    Apr 29 2025
    Trump’s global chaos might just offer an opportunity. if we’re bold enough to take it. In this episode, we dive into how a crisis can give countries the political permission to reshape their economies, starting with how we tax, who we tax, and why we desperately need to rethink urban financing. From Roman emperors funding the Colosseum with "toilet taxes," to why Dublin (and most Irish cities) are economic engines shackled by a broken funding system, we explore how cities around the world are grabbing the purse strings and financing their own futures.

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    35 mins
  • Popeonomics?

    Popeonomics?
    Apr 24 2025
    We mark the passing of Pope Francis by asking: is there such a thing as "Catholic Economics"? If so, what is it, and what strain of Catholic economics did the Pope represent? We start with a lad stopped by the Italian cops on a Vespa in Rome, and a most unusual and uplifting conversation with the Pope, Bono, and yours truly. Yeah, for real. We explore liberation theology, the roots of Franciscan banking, and the common and deeply embedded DNA of Catholic social teaching in the economic policy of Catholic countries, despite widespread secularism. By the way, I did pay the fine!

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    46 mins
  • The New Great Game?

    The New Great Game?
    Apr 22 2025
    The world shifting under our feet and US financial markets remain in turmoil. We explore whether Trump’s economic war with China is backfiring, and might push Europe closer to Beijing, not Washington. We detail a likley monetary scenario for the US over the coming months which will be the backdrop to any geo-political moves. For example, could France, weighed down by debt, turn to China as creditor? Are we entering a new global “Great Game,” where America’s threats drive its allies into the arms of its rivals? If Europe stops financing the U.S. bond market, what happens next? A podcast on grand strategy, with a few French wines, altar boy memories, and Machiavellian moves along the way.

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    38 mins
  • Paris, Power & Picking Sides: Europe’s Awakening in a MAGA World

    Paris, Power & Picking Sides: Europe’s Awakening in a MAGA World
    Apr 17 2025
    Broadcasting from Paris, we bring a bottle of wine and a warning: the transatlantic honeymoon is over. As America turns inward under the MAGA banner, Europe, led in thought (and theatre) by France, is starting to ask tough questions: Can we still rely on the US? Should we even try? From Macron’s eerily prescient Sorbonne speech to the wild moves in the US bond market, this episode explores why France feels vindicated, why Ireland might soon have to pick a side, and why the real battlefield isn't Normandy or NATO, it’s the balance sheet. With detours through wine laws, de Gaulle in Connemara, and why Nike’s Vietnamese workforce matters more than you'd think, this is a global economic story told with Gallic flair and geopolitical bite.

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    36 mins