Money Talks from The Economist

Investors and central banks can’t get enough of gold. The precious metal’s price has climbed by 38% over the past year to over $2,700 per troy ounce—a record high. But gold pays no dividends, generates no yield and its value has very little to do with demand for jewellery, in which it is commonly used. So what’s behind the surging price of gold?Hosts: Mike Bird, Alice Fulwood and Tom Lee-Devlin. Guests: Gregor Gregersen, founder of The Reserve, a gold vault in Singapore; Shaokai Fan of the World Gold Council; and economic historian Nicholas Mulder.Transcripts of our podcasts are available via economist.com/podcasts.Listen to what matters most, from global politics and business to science and technology—subscribe to Economist Podcasts+.For more information about how to access Economist Podcasts+, please visit our FAQs page or watch our video explaining how to link your account.

Earlier this month, Elon Musk unveiled a new autonomous taxi, designed by his car company Tesla. Musk promises that his Cybercab, a two-seater car without a steering wheel or pedals, will be on sale before 2027. But how realistic is this vision? With driverless technology still under development, how long will it be until autonomous vehicles become part of everyday life?Hosts: Tom Lee-Devlin, Mike Bird and Alice Fulwood. Guests: Simon Wright, industry editor at The Economist; Gavin Jackson, CEO of driverless software company OXA; Holly Watson Nall, an engineer at Oxa; and Kersten Heineke, head of the McKinsey Centre for Future Mobility.Transcripts of our podcasts are available via economist.com/podcasts.Listen to what matters most, from global politics and business to science and technology—subscribe to Economist Podcasts+.For more information about how to access Economist Podcasts+, please visit our FAQs page or watch our video explaining how to link your account.

Why do some countries become rich, while others remain impoverished? It’s a question that inspired three academics awarded this year’s Nobel prize in economics—Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson of MIT, and James Robinson of the University of Chicago. We speak to the three laureates about their seminal work on the economic legacy of colonialism, why they think institutions such as private property rights and democracy deliver long-term prosperity, and what they make of the resurgence of authoritarianism.Hosts: Alice Fulwood, Mike Bird and Tom Lee-Devlin. Guests: Daron Acemoglu of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Simon Johnson of the MIT Sloan School of Management; James Robinson of The Pearson Institute for the Study and Resolution of Global Conflicts at the University of Chicago; and The Economist’s Gavin Jackson.Transcripts of our podcasts are available via economist.com/podcasts.Listen to what matters most, from global politics and business to science and technology—subscribe to Economist Podcasts+.For more information about how to access Economist Podcasts+, please visit our FAQs page or watch our video explaining how to link your account.

For everything that happens online, there is a server in a room somewhere doing the work. The physical underpinning of everything that happens online has become big business. Demand for server capacity is growing rapidly with the development of cloud computing and AI, and so is the need for the massive, energy-hungry data centres that support it. The location of those digital warehouses is now crucial, not just for speed and proximity, but for the new tussles over data protectionism. So how will economic and geopolitical considerations shape the data-centre industry?Hosts: Mike Bird, Alice Fulwood and Tom Lee-Devlin. Guests: The Economist’s Ethan Wu; Cheam Tat Inn, managing director of Equinix Malaysia; and Waldemar Szlezak, global head of digital infrastructure at investment firm KKR.Transcripts of our podcasts are available via economist.com/podcasts.Listen to what matters most, from global politics and business to science and technology—subscribe to Economist Podcasts+.For more information about how to access Economist Podcasts+, please visit our FAQs page or watch our video explaining how to link your account.

Agent commissions are a key part of how the US housing market operates. Realtors representing the seller and the buyer have typically taken a large cut of the sale price - usually 5% or 6%. Now the National Association of Realtors has lost a class action lawsuit brought by homesellers, claiming these high commissions are the result of anti-competitive practices. So will new rules, agreed in the settlement of this suit, bring down the cost of buying and selling a home?Hosts: Alice Fulwood and Mike Bird. Guests: Michael Ketchmark, personal injury attorney at Ketchmark and McCreight; and Rob Hahn, real estate strategist and author of the Notorious ROB Substack.Transcripts of our podcasts are available via economist.com/podcasts.Listen to what matters most, from global politics and business to science and technology—subscribe to Economist Podcasts+.For more information about how to access Economist Podcasts+, please visit our FAQs page or watch our video explaining how to link your account.

Donald Trump has promised to “make America affordable again” if he wins the US election in November. Kamala Harris, meanwhile, has said she would build an “opportunity economy”. But has either one of them convinced investors they are the better bet? We ask what markets make of each candidate and follow the money to find out how investors rate their chances of winning when voters go to the polls.Hosts: Alice Fulwood and Simon Rabinovitch. Guests: The Economist’s Owen Winter; Joe Saluzzi of Themis Trading; and Bhanu Baweja, chief strategist at UBS.Transcripts of our podcasts are available via economist.com/podcasts.Listen to what matters most, from global politics and business to science and technology—subscribe to Economist Podcasts+.For more information about how to access Economist Podcasts+, please visit our FAQs page or watch our video explaining how to link your account.

The first 15 years of the 21st century were a time of extraordinary progress in international development. Since 2000, a billion people have been lifted out of extreme poverty, while child mortality has halved. But most of that progress was achieved by 2015—and outcomes over the last nine years have been much more dismal. Now, it seems that the world’s poorest countries are no longer converging with the richer economies. So why has development stalled?Hosts: Mike Bird, Alice Fulwood and Tom Lee-Devlin. Guests: The Economist’s Cerian Richmond Jones; Mark Suzman, CEO of the Gates Foundation; Paul Collier, professor of economics and public policy at Oxford University's Blavatnik School of Government. Transcripts of our podcasts are available via economist.com/podcasts.Listen to what matters most, from global politics and business to science and technology—subscribe to Economist Podcasts+.For more information about how to access Economist Podcasts+, please visit our FAQs page or watch our video explaining how to link your account.

Americans spend more time in front of their TVs watching YouTube than Netflix. And the videos they are watching on the platform are, increasingly, of the quality that you might expect from the streaming giant. But for the producers of that content, the business models could not be more different. So how did YouTube come to dominate the TV screen?Hosts: Tom Lee-Devlin and Mike Bird. Guests: The Economist’s media editor Tom Wainwright; Abi Watson of Enders Analysis; and Jubilee Media’s founder Jason Y. Lee.Transcripts of our podcasts are available via economist.com/podcasts.Listen to what matters most, from global politics and business to science and technology—subscribe to Economist Podcasts+.For more information about how to access Economist Podcasts+, please visit our FAQs page or watch our video explaining how to link your account.