The Dollar, the Ape & the End of an Empire

The David McWilliams Podcast

David McWilliams

News & Politics

4.6 • 643 Ratings

🗓️ 24 June 2025

⏱️ 46 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Live from a packed GAA hall at the Dalkey Book Festival, this episode tackles one of the wildest questions in economics: how did humans, flimsy, anxious apes, end up running the world, and why did we invent money to do it? We dig into the evolution of money as a collective hallucination hardwired into our psychology. Along the way, we unpack how 90% of dollars exist only digitally, how the pandemic rewired our sense of value, and why the dollar’s global dominance might be nearing its final act. From Mesopotamian beer tabs to the Fed’s modern firepower, we trace the story of money as a force that built empires and could just as easily unmake them.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Mac, just before we start, I was on Amazon looking for a little beach read, you know,
0:06.5	and lo and behold, look what I see.
0:10.1	David McWilliams, money, a story of humanity at number one, beating the likes of J.D. Vance
0:17.0	and his hillbilly elegy and Ezra Klein.
0:20.1	Dave McWilliams, number one, boom.
0:22.4	This is the economics version of Top of the Pops.
0:25.5	You can have a whole lot of love soundtrack in the back.
0:29.0	But yes, no, you're right.
0:29.9	It's great to see that money is number one in the Amazon bestsellers in the UK
0:37.3	under the area of economic history, which is fantastic.
0:42.4	Again, thank you so much listeners for supporting the book, for buying the book, for buying the
0:47.2	audiobook. It's really great to see. And it is kind of nice to be number one ahead of the likes
0:53.0	of J.D. Vance and even Ezra Klein,
0:55.8	who I respect in New York Times, but who comes with a massive, massive audience.
1:00.1	So again, thank you very much.
1:02.2	And if you haven't bought your summer, read if in August you're heading off now to the beach,
1:06.6	you're thinking, what should I grab?
1:08.6	What should I read?
1:09.8	Grab money, a story of humanity. You will not
1:12.8	be disappointed, and that is from an unbiased reviewer, the fellow who wrote the bloody thing.
1:21.4	Hey, it's Adam Grant from Worklife, a podcast from TED. This episode is brought to you by FreshWorks.
1:27.8	Freshworks believes the complexity is the enemy of efficiency, so stop wrestling with bloated
	...

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