Podcast
The Econoclasts
The Econoclasts is a new podcast from UnHerd hosted by economist Yanis Varoufakis and journalist Wolfgang Munchau. While they don't always agree politically, they are united in one conviction: the consensus is rotten. Mainstream economics has consistently failed to predict the events that shape our world, yet this broken orthodoxy still dominates policy and media. Each week, they choose two pillars of the established orthodoxy — the "settled facts" — and shatter them, cutting through the spin to connect the dots between money, geopolitics, and the real forces shaping our future.
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Hosted on Acast. See https://acast.com/privacy for more information.
- Episodes
- 186
- Releases
- Weekly
- Typical length
- 39 min
- On air since
- 2023
- Latest episode
- 1 week ago
Episodes
186 episodes, newest first
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45 min
Brazil's class war victory & AI's silent jobs crisis
Show notes
In this episode of The Econoclasts, Yanis Varoufakis and Wolfgang Munchau dissect the political fallouts in Brazil and Serbia to debunk the prevailing narrative that the rise of the Right is an inevitable force that can only be mitigated by centrist technocracy, while revealing the looming threat of a silent AI-driven hiring freeze that risks permanently locking young workers out of the economy.
Hosted on Acast. See https://acast.com/privacy for more information.
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42 min
The fall of Macron & Europe’s cowardly Ukraine strategy
Show notes
In this episode of The Econoclasts, Yanis Varoufakis and Wolfgang Munchau dissect the catastrophic collapse of Emmanuel Macron’s ‘revolutionary centrist’ experiment in France, exposing how a decade of technocratic austerity and underinvestment has fuelled widespread social unrest and pushed the country to the brink of insolvency, while revealing the cowardice and hypocrisy of the EU’s current Ukraine strategy that they warn is steadily bankrupting Europe, deepening its geopolitical vassalage to the United States, and leaving the continent powerless to shape the inevitable outcome of the war.
Hosted on Acast. See https://acast.com/privacy for more information.
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40 min
Trump’s Russian diesel deal & France’s fatal debt collapse
Show notes
In this episode of The Econoclasts, Yanis Varoufakis and Wolfgang Munchau dissect Trump’s Russian diesel deal to expose the collapse of Western unity, while debunking the myth of French fiscal incompetence to reveal why France’s €3.6 trillion debt crisis is a structurally inevitable flaw of the euro.
Hosted on Acast. See https://acast.com/privacy for more information.
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48 min
France’s fiscal crisis & Europe's dangerous war fever
Show notes
In this episode of The Econoclasts, Yanis Varoufakis and Wolfgang Munchau dissect the gathering financial and political storm in France, expose the self-defeating mechanics of European austerity, and reveal the dangerous escalation of 'war fever' across the continent, where hybrid-war narratives and NATO-Russia tensions threaten to drag an economically fragile, unprepared Europe into a devastating pre-1914 style conflict.
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39 min
Europe's pre-war madness & the reindustrialisation myth
Show notes
In this episode of The Econoclasts, Yanis Varoufakis and Wolfgang Munchau dissect the escalating geopolitical tensions between Western powers, Russia, and China, expose the dangerous anti-diplomacy bias within mainstream media and centrist political establishments that pushes Europe toward a pre-war posture, and debunk the political myth that military Keynesianism and factory-focused reindustrialisation can restore high-paying blue-collar jobs in an automated age.
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43 min
Germany’s political meltdown & how the Left betrayed Europe
Show notes
In this episode of The Econoclasts, Yanis Varoufakis and Wolfgang Munchau dissect the systemic breakdown of German centrist politics, reveal the uncomfortable truth about Europe’s total lack of defence sovereignty under US hegemony, and debunk the conventional political narrative by exposing how the centre-Left bears primary responsibility for the continent’s long-term deindustrialisation and geopolitical decline.
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45 min
The AI extinction myth & Europe’s tech collapse
Show notes
In this AI focussed episode of The Econoclasts, Yanis Varoufakis and Wolfgang Munchau expose the recent apocalyptic warnings from tech bosses as tricks for regulatory capture, reveal how weaponised AI and China’s robotic lead threaten stability, and dissect Europe’s failure to retain sovereignty in an era of cloud capital.
Hosted on Acast. See https://acast.com/privacy for more information.
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45 min
Germany's AfD surge & the death of the European project
Show notes
In this episode of The Econoclasts, Yanis Varoufakis and Wolfgang Munchau dissect the political fallout from the AfD’s electoral breakthrough in Germany, debunk the establishment myth of how Hitler came to power in order to draw alarming parallels to what is happening with the AfD today, and reveal why the European Union’s current structure is inherently incapable of preventing systemic decay and the rise of ethnonationalism.
Hosted on Acast. See https://acast.com/privacy for more information.
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42 min
Iceland's EU rejection & the North Atlantic debt trap
Show notes
Get your tickets for The Econoclasts Live: The world after capitalism, here: http://unherd.com/econoclastslive
In this episode of The Econoclasts, Yanis Varoufakis and Wolfgang Munchau dissect the fallout of Iceland’s historic referendum vote to reject European Union accession talks, reveal the widening cracks in the transatlantic financial consensus, and debate whether a European capital markets union can revive investment or simply feed a stagnant ‘rent trap.’
Hosted on Acast. See https://acast.com/privacy for more information.
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31 min
America’s debt spiral & China’s big AI bet
Show notes
In this episode of The Econoclasts, Yanis Varoufakis and Wolfgang Munchau debunk the mainstream economic orthodoxy that reserve currency status grants America immunity from default, exposing how the US is heading towards an uncontrollable sovereign debt spiral, while exploring how China is pursuing an alternative path to escape economic stagnation through state-directed open-source automation.
Hosted on Acast. See https://acast.com/privacy for more information.
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38 min
The decline of the US empire - with Richard D. Wolff
Show notes
In this episode of The Econoclasts, Yanis Varoufakis and guest Richard D. Wolff analyse the decline of US imperial hegemony, tracing how eroding global power, systemic economic instability, and the rollback of social democratic reforms have fuelled widespread political alienation, while offering a critical critique of mainstream economic theory and exploring the potential for a renewed socialist movement in America.
Hosted on Acast. See https://acast.com/privacy for more information.
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45 min
The wealth tax myth & Britain’s dangerous Rejoin trap
Show notes
In this episode of The Econoclasts, Yanis Varoufakis and Wolfgang Munchau debunk dominant economic orthodoxies surrounding wealth taxes as a quick-fix silver bullet for inequality, expose how central bank policies and globalisation are stripping nation-states of their democratic sovereignty, and reveal the grim economic stagnation, debt, and regulatory traps awaiting the UK should it attempt to rejoin the European Union.
Hosted on Acast. See https://acast.com/privacy for more information.
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30 min
The greatest fraud in human history – with Ron Paul
Show notes
In this episode of The Econoclasts, Yanis Varoufakis and guest Representative Ron Paul join forces across the traditional Left-Right political spectrum to debunk the conventional economic orthodoxy of central banking, expose the covert tax of inflationary money printing, reveal how post-2008 financial bailouts transformed free-market capitalism into a system of corporate welfare, and dissect the collusion between big tech algorithms, state violence, and the military-industrial complex that erodes individual liberty and democratic accountability worldwide.
Hosted on Acast. See https://acast.com/privacy for more information.
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41 min
China’s hidden crisis & the West's dangerous wealth bubble
Show notes
In this episode of The Econoclasts, Yanis Varoufakis and Wolfgang Munchau reveal the hidden macroeconomic realities behind China’s ongoing growth recession and local debt crisis, and expose how decades of central bank bailouts and Quantitative Easing have fuelled an inflated wealth bubble that leaves a fragile Western financial system dangerously vulnerable and dependent on US asset inflation.
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39 min
The UK’s investment trap & the lie behind Western wealth
Show notes
In this episode of The Econoclasts, Yanis Varoufakis and Wolfgang Munchau dissect the political delusions stalling Western growth, debunking the idea that state investment alone can revive the UK, exposing Europe’s dangerous tech gap behind America and China, and revealing how flawed economic data hides declining US living standards.
Hosted on Acast. See https://acast.com/privacy for more information.
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37 min
Europe’s populist panic & China’s real free market
Show notes
In this episode of The Econoclasts, Yanis Varoufakis and Wolfgang Munchau dissect the establishment’s self-defeating 'lawfare' strategy against rising right-wing populists like Marine Le Pen, and Nigel Farage, while debunking the myth that capitalism is synonymous with free markets by contrasting Western state-protected monopolies like SpaceX with China’s highly competitive, state-guided economic model.
Hosted on Acast. See https://acast.com/privacy for more information.
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39 min
The tragedy of America 250 & the truth about Ukraine
Show notes
In this episode of The Econoclasts, Yanis Varoufakis and Wolfgang Munchau analyse the structural decay of American hegemony at its 250-year milestone, while exposing the corporate and political motivations behind the media's distorted Ukraine war narrative used to justify a domestic defence heist funded by ballooning public debt.
Hosted on Acast. See https://acast.com/privacy for more information.
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39 min
The great Brexit myth & Germany’s industrial collapse
Show notes
In this episode of The Econoclasts, Yanis Varoufakis and Wolfgang Munchau debunk the popular orthodoxy surrounding Brexit, exposing the phoney statistics used to fabricate a narrative of British macroeconomic self-harm, while dissecting the existential reality of Germany's inevitable structural collapse through its automakers' loss of the critical AI and EV race to China.
Hosted on Acast. See https://acast.com/privacy for more information.
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36 min
The fall of Starmer & Europe's great energy swindle
Show notes
In this episode of The Econoclasts, Yanis Varoufakis and Wolfgang Munchau dissect the fallout of Keir Starmer’s resignation to expose a broader Western leadership crisis, before debunking the myth of the free market to reveal the hidden corporate swindle rigging European electricity prices - a systemic failure that is not only driving up consumer bills but starving the continent of the energy capacity needed to compete with the US and China in the AI race.
Hosted on Acast. See https://acast.com/privacy for more information.
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38 min
NATO’s narrative collapse & Anthropic’s AI shutdown
Show notes
In this episode of The Econoclasts, Yanis Varoufakis and Wolfgang Munchau expose the dangerous flaws of a newly hyped Trump-Iran pre-deal, reveal how Europe's aggressive shift toward wasteful defence spending is a delusion built on exaggerated threats, and uncover a widening technological chasm where aggressive US nationalist regulations and a stagnant European mindset are combining to leave the West severely outpaced by China’s productivity-boosting integration of AI and robotics.
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