Why Your Barista Has a Master's Degree

0:00David McWilliams: Coming up on the podcast, elite overproduction. What happens when we produce too many graduates and the economy doesn't produce the jobs that are commensurate with those graduates? Do they get frustrated? Do they become a volatile constituency? And if so, what happens next? It's all about elite overproduction. It's coming up in a couple of minutes.

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0:53David McWilliams: Hablas espanol? Parli italiano? If you've used Babbel, you would. Babbel's conversation-based technique teaches you useful words and phrases to get you speaking quickly about the things you actually talk about in the real world. With lessons handcrafted by over 200 language experts and voiced by real native speakers, Babbel is like having a private tutor in your pocket. Start speaking with Babbel today. Get up to 55 % off your Babbel subscription right now at babbel.com slash acast. Spelled B-A-B-B-E-L dot com slash acast. Rules and restrictions may apply.

1:34David McWilliams: To understand the economy, you have to understand human nature. This podcast is powered by Acast. How are you doing there? It is time for the podcast. And the podcast today is going to be about a book that I'm reading at the moment, which is a book by a fella called Peter Turchin. It's called End Times. Now, John, it's not the most uplifting title. Elites can't release the path to political disintegration, John. But it is really, really fascinating. I feel so energized now, Mac. I know, I know. Don't I bring you all the good times? Don't I bring you all the good tidings? But no, it is interesting because in the context of what Sinead O'Shea is, in the context of what Sinead O'Sullivan has been saying in the last couple of weeks, and people's talking about Ireland and talking about the States and talking about the general sense of disharmony, the general sense of, yeah, things are going well on paper, but in practice or in private, people feel that their world is not so much falling apart.

2:41David McWilliams: On the contrary, people don't think it's falling apart, but they're just not really, really achieving what they want to achieve given their expectations, given their education, et cetera. And this guy, Peter Turchin's view, is a thing called climodynamics. It's cliodynamics. I think it's cliodynamics. It's a new pursuit. And basically what they're saying is... I've never heard that word before. What does Clio refer to? Well, Clio, John, is the name of the Greek mythological muse of history. Right. And dynamics is the science of change. So what they're saying is, why do we see again and again, great empires, great civilizations, they rise.

3:25David McWilliams: They rise quickly. They consolidate. They expand. They appear to be imperious. And then they begin to disintegrate, dwindle, and ultimately collapse. Now, Turchin's saying, why is this? Because this is something we see all the time. No civilization has ever been permanent. Every civilization has been temporary. Like some, like the Roman Empire and the Greek Empire went down for quite some time, but not really. The heyday of the Greeks was about 200 years, maybe 300 years maximum. Romans about 500 years, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, right? British Empire. And of course, he's writing from the perspective of a Russian emigre to America.

4:08David McWilliams: And I presume his worldview is, you know, what is happening with the American Empire? Why does it seem the American Empire rose, you know, in the late 19th century, then accelerated through the First World War, then into the Second World War, peaked and began to consolidate its power, then regenerated itself during the 1970s and 80s, and then begins the gradual process of not disintegration, but decline. And why is that decline? And are the repetitive forces within the economy and within society that make history cliodynamic, i.e. that there is some way in which you see these recurring patterns again and again and again.

4:55David McWilliams: And again, this guy Turchin has used big data. He's looked over the last 10 ,000 years at various different ideas. And he said, despite the myriad of differences, complex human societies are organized according to the same general principles. What he says is that when they begin to break down, you see these patterns emerging. Right. What kind of patterns? He said, you know, when a state like such the United States has stagnating or declining real wages, a growing gap between rich and poor, overproduction of young graduates with advanced degrees, declining trust in the public realm, and exploding public debt.

5:34David McWilliams: These seemingly disparate social indicators that don't seem to be associated with each other or connected with each other, he says, are actually related to each other dynamically. And he said, historically, these types of developments have served as leading indicators for looming political instability. And what he's saying is that since the 1970s, all these factors in the United States have taken a turn for the worse. Jesus. And his data is pointing to the years around 2020, around now, when the confluence of these trends is expected to trigger a spike in political instability. So that was his basic idea.

6:13David McWilliams: Well, he's not wrong, is he? He's not wrong. And he's saying, look, he's saying these hidden forces are not so hidden. So people are trying to see if there's a conspiracy theory or there's some outside shift, there's a big technological change, and that is what's precipitating the angst and the fear. He's saying, no, no. He said, it turns out that since the very first complex societies have been organized, this is about 5 ,000 years ago. And again, I speak about that in the book, the Sumerian civilization, et cetera. No matter how successful they might be for a while, eventually they all run into problems.

6:46David McWilliams: All complex societies go through these cycles of alternating stretches of internal peace and harmony, periodically interrupted by outbreaks of internal warfare and discord. And his basic idea is the United States and the West in general is coming to this sort of peak, right? And his key metric or a key metric is the following. He said, basically what happens is the social pyramid gets top heavy. Too many people are educated to become the elite. And after a while, these people end up competing with each other. And that the social disharmony comes not from the very poor rising up, but from those people who were educated to be and were prepared for becoming the elite.

7:38David McWilliams: they no longer see a pathway to the elites because it's blocked to them and they are the ones who revolt. And a pure frustration. And a frustration. Yeah. As a frustration. And disappointment and feeling like that you've been had. Feeling that you've been had, right? So put that now in your pipe and smoke it, as we used to say in the old days, John, right? Okay. I'll skin it up. Exactly. Skin it up there, right? Before you take solace in the herb, my friend, Let us have a look and see, could these type of things, or at least straws in the wind, be evident in our own little benighted civilization, the Irish civilization?

8:22Can I just say before you start, when you're talking there about kind of slightly in Armageddon terms, you know, we're heading for this crescendo of some sort, and whether it's an upheaval or an uprising or whatever. It reminds me of what Neil Howe was talking about in the fourth turning, that we are, according to him, we're heading to this crescendo of sorts. And then it all breaks down. We all start again. So I wonder, is there kind of a correlation between the two?

8:54David McWilliams: I think there is a correlation, I think because Turchin's originally Russian. It's more apocalyptic. It's more Slavvy. It's got a more... More extreme. It's got a more Rasputin-esque bang off it. You know, I mean, Howe is more, you know, I would say he's more like a Hollywood version of Turchin, right? Right. Because his references are American culture and American rock and roll and the millennials and the Zoomers. And again, Neil Howe, if you're interested, was the man who came up with the term millennial, which again was one of those terms that really stuck. The idea that there was a generation that was coming into maturity in the year 2000.

9:31David McWilliams: and what I say maturity, we're coming to adulthood in the year 2000 and they, of course, were the generation or are the generation that spawned the generation Z, is that what they're called? Z, Z, Z, Z. Zed's dead, baby. Zed's dead. Yes. Great line. Great line. It was preceded by, bring out the gimp. Yes, it was. Answers on a postcard, please, if you are a fan of the Dave McWilliams podcast and you can give us the scene where Bring Out the Gimp was followed by Zed is dead, we will give you a copy of The End Times, Peter Turchin's book on elites, counter-elites, and political path to political disintegration.

10:18David McWilliams: So, now that we have got our gimp suits on, John has spoken the herb, let us get going, right? What an image. I know, fucking hell, that's doing my head in. I was in a bar the other night, John, and I was talking to a young barman. And what was fascinating for me is that the conversation switched from how you're doing to economic history. And he's a fan of the podcast. And we started talking about a certain, not so much highfalutin, but unusual esoteric part of economic history, which was Hyman Minsky's notion that equilibrium doesn't exist and that all stable societies are inherently instable.

11:02David McWilliams: And instability is actually a function of stability. Sounds like a laugh. So I'm looking at this guy. No, of course it's a laugh, John. This is the sort of thing where I'm not talking to you. When you're not smoking the herb in your gimp suits, I'm talking about these notions to barmen. And I thought, you know, this is fascinating. I asked him, how does he know this stuff? And he said he had a master's in economic history. And he was pulling pints in a bar. Right. And I thought to myself, does this matter that the barman is overeducated for what he's doing? And then the thought struck me that when you go into a coffee shop, does it matter that the barista who you're asking, like a double espresso from, actually probably is a double first from some university?

11:44David McWilliams: And I think it does. And I think that this is what Turchin's talking about. It's a leading indicator of what Turchin called elite overproduction. and the elite overproduction is the best way to imagine it, John, is Turchin basically says that most societies have conveyor belts and those conveyor belts are transport people from one social class to another. And as long as the conveyor belt is going upwards, everyone's hunky-dory. But what happens if the conveyor belt turns into sort of an elite game of musical chairs, right? So let's say, for example, the musical chairs are the elite jobs in a society.

12:29David McWilliams: Now, as every year passes, as more and more ambitious people come into the room to acquire those chairs and they expect one of those chairs, when the music stops, if those chairs haven't expanded, commensured with the amount of people who come into the room, more and more people are left without a chair. And it's not that the number of chairs doesn't increase as the economy grows, it does, but nowhere near the rate of the amount of expectant players who come in. And as the room becomes fuller and fuller and the amount of disappointed players expands, there will eventually be a fight over the chairs, right?

13:05David McWilliams: So that's his essential imagery. And what he's saying is that all societies have a tendency, when the civilization is coming to an end, or at least is coming towards a moment of generational political discord to have the same sort of dynamic, right? So we come back to our friend, the barman, who has this degree in economics, right? Yeah, yeah. Today, Ireland is the most educated population in the European Union, with the second highest percentage of third level education degree holders in the world. But nearly one in three degree holders work in jobs that do not require third level education. like the barista or the bartender.

13:48And moreover, a recent study said the likelihood of Irish graduates

13:52David McWilliams: working in high-status employment had fallen from 67 % in 2005 to 54 % in 2020, right? So what this means is that young people can't secure jobs that are commensurate with their level of education. And of course, on top of that, they're probably living at home with their parents. so they can't get homes commensurate with their expectations. Their ambitions are therefore dashed. And this creates a certain amount of resentment. This is exactly what Turchin is talking about. Like, this is so pertinent to me at the moment where, you know, three of my girls are still in college. One is finishing masters.

14:34The others are finishing their degrees. And they're heading into this world of, you know, do they go into work or do they continue education and do a post-grad or a master's or something, you know?

14:48David McWilliams: But this is exactly what Turchin's talking about. What he's saying is an underachieving, I mean relatively, I don't mean underachieving as a person, but relatively an underachieving cohort of over-educated people who were brought up and educated to expect more from the economy than the economy is delivering, they become frustrated and politically volatile. And his view is the constituency that eventually moves to destroy the status quo that their parents have built. And he says that modern revolutions will not originate with the abject poor, but with the relatively rich, and more than the relatively rich, the relatively disappointed.

15:26David McWilliams: And this is a problem that you've just highlighted. It's happening all over the Western world, right? And it kind of exists when the cast of educated citizens who expect to join the elite with good jobs and prospects and salaries, status and homes, find their ambitions thwarted by the reality that there's only so much room at the top and many of them are locked out of that. And this is elite overproduction. So when a very large educated social group emerges who can't find their place at the apex of society, they will revolt. And when the jobs of what their grandparents did are being done by immigrants, these newly aspirant professionals who are basically the product of economic success of their parents and the product of upward social mobility, they expect more.

16:15David McWilliams: When the economy delivers less, they get angry. Now, this, I believe, is a fascinating snapshot of where Ireland could be going. I've just given you the figures. you've given us the personal testimony, right? And you talked about master's degrees. This is interesting. So years ago, in the late 1980s, when I graduated from college, right, I think the figure was only 14 % of Irish people went to university. Right. So then that particular piece of paper was really a passport into upward social mobility. If you went to college, if you did well, if you got the piece of parchment, chances were you were going to actually move ahead economically, status-wise, socially, etc.

17:07David McWilliams: Right? Today, 70 % of school leavers go to university. And that creates far more competition in the career market. And then, as you said, because a primary degree is no longer enough, right, more and more graduates shunt themselves into to more and more education to try and gain access to a number of privileged jobs. And I'll give you a figure. This is extraordinary. Between 2007 and 2024, the number of Irish people enrolling for a master's degree doubled from 30 ,000 to 66 ,500. Wow, yeah. And of course, the more master's degrees we produce, the more the value of those master's degrees falls.

17:52David McWilliams: It doesn't rise because everyone has them. As you've always said before, when you're talking about the paradox of aggregation, you know, the master's degree was the thing that actually made you stand out. Now, when everyone has a master's degree, no one stands out. Yeah. You know, it's a little bit like priority boarding and Ryanair, you know, when everyone's priority boarding, no one's priority. So it becomes not useless, but they're not nearly as valuable and competition just goes through the roof. Yes. So the, you're absolutely, so the paradox of aggregation and economics, just to remind our listeners, is the base of the notion of the guy who stands up in front of you at a football match, right?

18:33David McWilliams: So he stands up in front of you to get a better view. That's the guy doing the Masters. But he doesn't realize that by standing up in front of you, he blocks your view and then you stand up and then you block the view of the fellow behind you and he stands up and then he blocks the view of the person behind him and suddenly the entire stadium is standing when we paid to sit. That is the paradox of aggregation. And it's exactly the same as, you know, the master's degree, the PhD, all that sort of carry on. I mean, you know, I did a master's years ago. I'm sure it was really a tiny percent of the population.

19:07David McWilliams: And then I remember that was the degree that was essential to get into the central bank. So there was a social contract, which is you want to be an economist. You do your undergraduate degree in economics. If you want an economics job, you've got to do this master. So in a way, it was like you're buying a passport. Yes. Into a sort of a rarefied ployster where you could become an economist, you could learn economics, you had a career path. And now, as you said, when everyone has one, nobody has one, in effect. Yeah. Now, what I found quite funny, John, just as an aside, is I put an article talking about this in the Irish Times, which I'd written last week, up on LinkedIn, right?

19:52David McWilliams: Right. And what was interesting was the people who reacted very negatively to this and said David McWilliams is anti-education, which is only a very myopic person could come to that conclusion from what we're saying, were professors in the very third level institution that have expanded so much to absorb in these new master's degrees. Right. So that strikes me as quite interesting Because rather than seeing the totality of the argument, which is not that educating people is bad, but that educating people at a time when the economy can't produce the jobs creates what we call in economics externalities, creates costs to society, right?

20:42David McWilliams: But I just thought it was quite funny, you know, and all the messages were reiteration, yeah, you're absolutely right to rebut that guy, blah, blah, blah. All came also from professors. Now, this is an interesting thing because if we go back to the musical chairs idea, if the amount of chairs remains the same or doesn't grow enough, the system adapts. Now, do you remember what Sinead was talking about, cause and effect and adaptation last week. Yes. She was saying, look, if, for example, the symptoms of the problem are the things that we address, then there will be an adaptation of the society.

21:24David McWilliams: So, for example, if we decide, right, we need more and more educated people, but that more and more educated people, one of the costs of that is that the value of those degrees goes down. Now, if the private sector cannot produce as many jobs as are necessary to bring those people in and give them status, something will adapt. And what we've noticed in Ireland, which is very interesting, John, is that the private sector is now being replaced by the public sector as the place of choice for business professionals in Ireland. Really? Today, semi-state and public state bodies account for six out of 10 of the most attractive employers for business professionals.

22:14David McWilliams: Now, why is this? Is there's those business professionals are getting masters and MBAs and what have you. And the private sector can't take them in. And the public sector is taking them in because public sector has higher graduate salaries and much more job security. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the question is, could it be that as elite competition is sourced, the higher public sector is being co-opted by the higher education sector to keep the whole show on the road? That's quite interesting that basically what we're doing is we're producing more and more graduates, more and more higher level graduates.

22:53David McWilliams: the place where they are actually being absorbed in is not the private sector and startups and entrepreneurial activity, all that stuff we talked about last week, but it's actually going into public sector jobs. Why is that? Because the public sector jobs are in receipt of the largesse from the multinationals, which allows the public sector to pay higher salaries, offer better conditions, and of course, much greater job security. Right, okay, okay. So this is sort of a... This is a fascinating thing, which might explain why the LinkedIn was so inflamed. Because basically the idea is that the next revolution will happen on LinkedIn, not Facebook.

23:36Although perhaps the reason why we have so many young people going to university and seeking degrees is because we never had that industrial base. And we've spoken about this before. we've gone from an agricultural-based economy to a pretty much high-tech service industry. And we're educating our students to work in this kind of limited sector and this very narrow industry. Where in places like Germany, where they have an appropriate education system, that's based around their local industry. So you have graduates coming out that are car makers or steelworkers or, you know, all those kind of jobs that can be highly specialized as well.

24:20David McWilliams: You're absolutely right. So this is the success of the German apprenticeship scheme, where you're actually industry, German industry and German education system move in lockstep. And what they do is they produce a huge amount of people who can fix things, who can mend things, who can build things, who can look into engines. And they have moved up the technological value chain as German industry has moved up the technological value chain. But they have at their core an industrial education. You're absolutely right. We don't have that. We used to have things called techs, John, years ago. And in fact, loads of regional techs have become universities, been upgraded to universities over the last 20 years, which again is producing more and more of these graduates.

25:11David McWilliams: And as you said, maybe the service industry can't actually absorb them. But the reason the service industry can't absorb them is it's very, very hard to increase productivity in services. And by that I mean, it's very easy to increase productivity in manufacturing because you just have to acquire a way of doing things at scale. So if you can have a machine that produces more and more of these things cheaper, you can increase the wages of the industrial worker, while at the same time increasing the productivity of the industrial worker and increasing the profitability of the industrial firm. Try doing that with hairdressers, John.

25:53Yeah, you get better scissors.

25:55David McWilliams: But you could have, could you imagine you had 10 scissors in a scissors machine? Yeah, yeah. You push all the people into it, right? And you'd have everyone. You could do it a bit of that yourself, Mac. I know, that's true. But people in services want service. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So these are labor-intensive jobs by definition. And by definition, labor-intensive jobs have lower productivity. And at a certain stage, this may well be also what you're saying is happening. So what you can see is, let's go back to the Turchin idea. The Turchin idea is that a society becomes unstable just at the very time as it seems to be delivering stability.

26:34Yeah, I mean, as a dad of young 20-somethings, it is worrying. So what is the next phase of this? And saying that in the context of AI being introduced right, left and centre and jobs being cut right, left and centre.

26:53David McWilliams: So let's talk about that, John, after a little bit of this.

26:59This episode of the David Mark Williams podcast is brought to you by Long Angle. Mark, have you ever come across Long Angle?

27:07David McWilliams: Do you know what, John? I have heard of them. It's a private vetted community for people who've built serious wealth and are navigating what comes next. You know what strikes me about doing this show is every big economic story eventually lands on someone's kitchen table somewhere. A recession isn't an abstract thing if you're deciding whether to sell an asset. A housing crisis isn't academic if you're trying to figure out what to do with capital. The macro becomes very personal very quickly. And most people are navigating that without anyone who's actually been in the same position. You're absolutely right, John.

27:40David McWilliams: And that's what Long Angle is. It's a vetted peer community, 8 ,000 members, no membership fee, where people at that level of financial complexity just help each other out, help each other to think clearly. Someone who's made the call you're about to make. You do need to qualify to get in. Which is the point. Longangle.com slash David. Longangle.com slash David. Parles-tu français? Hablas espagnol? Parli italiano? If you've used Babbel, you would. Babbel's conversation-based technique teaches you useful words and phrases to get you speaking quickly about the things you actually talk about in the real world.

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29:21So, Mike, we have graduates coming out our ears by the looks of things. But what is AI going to do? I mean, already we're seeing, you know, some of the big four reducing their graduate intake programs in favor of AI. So, like, you know, one thing, actually, I have to say, one thing I'm really tired of is when you say anything negative about AI, you're accused of being a Luddite. Now, sure, we've had lots of technological change over the years, and it's generally been a good thing. But right now, I can't quite see the positive parts of AI when it comes to things like graduate jobs. And it's normally, when you're accused of a Luddite, it's normally from people who are sitting in nice, stable, secure jobs.

30:15So what is the next phase of this?

30:18David McWilliams: Yeah, well, I think the first thing is to, just to remind listeners, we're talking about plyodynamics, which is a new science-based look at history. So for many, many years, people said, well, you know, you can learn from history, but it doesn't repeat itself exactly the same. Societies are too complex, technology changes the world so much, etc etc and there is a new branch of science it's almost the science of history it says no actually there are repetitive patterns that every civilization and every let's say empire displays which is the beginning middle and end of empire and the reason that they're all similar is because the internal dynamics the internal engine the internal combustion of those societies propels itself along the same way.

31:15David McWilliams: And one of the indications of coming towards internal discord before there are things like civil wars and revolutions is that these societies are characterized by elite overproduction, which is that the very success of the society creates dynamics at the top. One of the dynamics at the top before elite overproduction is far too much wealth concentrated at the very top, which Peter Turchin describes as the wealth pump, which pumps money from poor people to rich people rather than the other way around. And that I think we've seen in the United States over the last while, AI being a very good example of that, John.

31:57David McWilliams: Because the people who will do extremely well in AI are the very rich people who own the AI. And the people that they own all the artificial intelligence platforms and all the artificial intelligence apps and all that sort of stuff, right? The people whose jobs will be destroyed by AI are going to be, by and large, the new poor. And that wealth pump also comes at the same time as the elites are being overproduced and it's the fusion or the collision of both these forces that Turchin says kicks off social and revolutionary trade change. That's the first thing. Second thing is economists will retort and they'll say, yeah, well, it's ever been thus.

32:39David McWilliams: You know, technology has always changed the world. And yes, the Luddites claimed that the world was going to end and it didn't. Why? Because people find new ways. The great example of that recently was the internet. Lots and lots of people said in the late 1990s when the internet arrived, look, it's going to get rid of all sorts of things like travel agents and middlemen and these sort of things. And maybe it did. but it also created an entire new economy, the new economy being even social media is a new economy, smartphones, all those things, so that in a way the society adapts, right? But this doesn't take away from Tertian's key point, which is your key point, that if the technology arrives too quickly and if its disruptiveness is too elevated, what you're going to find is that these two forces, It's the wealth pump upwards, which creates a dynamic which makes rich people richer.

33:36David McWilliams: The great example in Ireland is people who own property can buy more property. Property values go up. Asset prices go up. They get richer and richer and richer, while the middle class kids get squeezed out. Then you superimpose upon that the fact that all the middle class kids are now overeducated. The elite has been overproduced. And then you finally add something like AI on top of that, which is destroying some of the pathways into the elite career. And you have this festering sense of dissatisfaction and frustration. So I think that's actually quite persuasive. It's not that we're on the cusp of something, but it's a way to analyze what's going on.

34:15David McWilliams: I think the last straw in the wind, John, has been, I don't know if you've noticed the pivot in AI speak at the moment, right? The first 18 months of the AI revolution was articulated by those sort of AI gurus who said, this is going to destroy jobs, this is going to change. They said it'll destroy the grunt jobs they kept talking about, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And Sam Altman and all these guys, Peter Thiel, they all danced to that particular tune. I don't know if you've noticed recently, they all keep saying, oh, no, no, AI is going to produce loads of jobs. Where? How? No, their pivot has been, their marketing pivot in the last couple of weeks has been, oh, no, no, no, no, we got that wrong.

35:01David McWilliams: AI is going to produce alternatives and jobs. I think it's because many people are waking up to your view, which is that, hold on a second, I didn't ask for this. Yeah. I don't really know what it's going to do. Politically, I'm not too sure if this is a great thing. Yeah. And more and more people in polls in the United States are saying, hold on a second. And so as a result of that, there has been a fear on the AI gurus that the political reaction against AI will be there from the populists, either Bernie or Trump or whoever. And ultimately now, what they're pivoting in is marketing ideas saying, oh, well, don't worry.

35:42David McWilliams: There's going to be new jobs. So all of these things are into the mix. I'll just give you one final thought, which is that in a country like Ireland, elite overproduction has one safety valve, and Ireland more than other ones, and that's emigration. What we are seeing in Ireland is the emigration of the young elite to places where they can get jobs which are commensurate with their expectations and they're not at home. And maybe once again, and I think that emigration is a great thing. I think you go, you learn, you see the world. and most likely you will come back if you can. Yeah. But it was also a very cynical ploy, and many people in Ireland would understand this, that the status quo, the caste system at the top in Ireland was quite happy for people to emigrate because it was, in a way, a valve that released the social pressure of the society not delivering.

36:48Yeah.

36:48David McWilliams: In the old age, that social valve was emigration because the pressure was unemployment. Now that social valve is emigration because pressure is not unemployment, but it's disappointment. And it's the disappointment of the younger folk that is actually building. But if they all go to Brisbane, and they all go to Melbourne, and they all go to New York, well, then the caste that is doing well can rest easy for another generation or at least half a generation. That would be a cynic's perspective, John. I would never be described as a cynic. But it's a fairly interesting place to end this particular podcast.

37:30David McWilliams: We will talk to you on Thursday. We're going to be talking about the history of money, John. Yes, indeed. On Thursday. With Brendan Greeley. With Brendan Greeley. We'll talk to you then.

37:51Thank you.

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38:30David McWilliams: Hablas espagnol? Parli italiano? If you've used Babbel, you would. Babbel's conversation-based technique teaches you useful words and phrases to get you speaking quickly about the things you actually talk about in the real world. With lessons handcrafted by over 200 language experts and voiced by real native speakers, Babbel is like having a private tutor in your pocket. Start speaking with Babbel today. Get up to 55 % off your Babbel subscription right now at babbel.com slash acast. Spelled B-A-B-B-E-L dot com slash acast. Rules and restrictions may apply.