Play the Devil's tennis you win swept Kennets. Welcome to the Blind Boy podcast.

If this is your first episode, consider going back to an earlier episode to familiarize yourself with the law of this podcast. I have a wonderful treat

this week. I have a fantastic guest. This person is... They're an economist. They're an economist who have had on this

podcast before. Who goes by the name of David McWilliams? Now if you live in Ireland

you know who David McWilliams. Now if you live in Ireland you know who David McWilliams is because he's

Ireland's foremost public economist but he's more than just an economist he's he's

a brilliant storyteller he's a fantastic story teller and

he's he's one of the people who introduced me to the hot take when I was just out of school of about 18 years of age as you know I

didn't have a very good time in school I failed my leaving cert I wouldn't have considered myself to be particularly intelligent or

guted at anything to be honest. When you're a teenager and you fail at school and you consistently get into trouble and you don't have a sense of self.

You're young, you're immature. You can begin to blame yourself. That's certainly what I did.

When I got out of school I just simply assumed the reason I was shit at school and the reason I couldn't behave myself

is because I'm not very smart and I'm not very good and I studied economics I studied economics in school

It was one of those classes where I had to do economics because I wanted to do art.

So if I was to do art, you know, have two classes a week in art,

whatever way the schedule worked, I had to pick another subject that wasn't interested in,

and I just picked economics.

And I studied economics in my leaving cert, probably twice a week for two years.

And I don't think I paid attention once, and I would have felt very frightened in class, and I would have felt,

this isn't for me, I'm not capable of this, I'm not able to do this, I would never have done homework.

I'd have just made my mind up from the start. I'm not smart enough for this economic stuff that has to do with money in numbers.

I'm just gonna fail this and I did I failed economics in the leaving cert. That's where my head was at

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