Episode 19

This week, as the dust settles on another quarter of global economic uncertainty, we’re trying to find pockets of optimism. We actually found one right here at home. Domenique kicks us off with a surprising announcement. She’s launched a new dip company with her partner in New South Wales! We take that local entrepreneurship and immediately zoom out to the world of finance, where gold prices are up a remarkable 50% this year. The whole conversation becomes a search for the connections between small-scale ventures and the massive forces that drive the world economy.

In our first major segment, What’s in the News, we dive into three of the week’s biggest movers including the Reserve Bank of Australia’s recent decision to hold rates, the latest Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, and the World Intellectual Property Organization’s innovation rankings. This leads to a discussion about the true engines of progress. We look at everything from the history of scientific thought to the painful but necessary concept of creative destruction. Our conclusion? Sustained, meaningful growth doesn’t come from policy alone. It relies on how well societies connect foundational knowledge, invention, and an institutional openness to radically new ideas.

We transition into a hard look at global stability. In The Hand, we break down the surprising resilience of Russia’s war economy, the shadowy and often misunderstood hidden oil trade, and what a slowing GDP across major nations actually means for global risk. Then, we wrap up with The Invisible, which tackles Elon Musk’s insistence that population collapse is the greatest long-term threat to civilization. This prompts us to consider the future of growth itself, and whether an aging, shrinking global populace can still power the world forward.