Money Talks from The Economist

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.

A dispute with her old record label could have derailed Taylor Swift's career—but instead, she used it to propel herself to superstardom. In the second of two special episodes, we get the inside story of the battle to acquire the rights to Swift’s first six albums. We then take an MBA class assessing their value and hear how the singer used the story of the dispute to remake the music industry to her advantage.Hosts: Alice Fulwood, Tom Lee-Devlin and Mike Bird. Guests: Tim Ingham, the founder of Music Business Worldwide; Kristelia García of the Georgetown University Law Center; Michael Schill of the Darden School of Business; and Bill Werde, former editorial director of Billboard magazine, current director of the Bandier Program at Syracuse University and author of the “Full Rate No Cap” newsletter.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.

Taylor Swift is reportedly worth $1.3bn. In the music industry, amassing that kind of fortune requires more than talent alone. It requires a shrewd business sense and an ability to be ruthless. In the first of two special episodes, we explore how Taylor Swift built the biggest brand in music.Hosts: Alice Fulwood, Tom Lee-Devlin and Mike Bird. Guests: Bob Reeves, a manager who was at one of Swift’s first gigs; Clay Myers, former Warner Music Group exec who helped facilitate one of Swift’s early hits; and Bill Werde, former editorial director of Billboard magazine, current director of the Bandier Program at Syracuse University and author of the “Full Rate No Cap” newsletter.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 decades, “the world’s factory” has been churning out goods for export. But many of those products were made not by Chinese companies, but by American, European or Japanese ones looking to take advantage of China’s cheap labour. But as the country’s economy slows, domestic firms are increasingly looking abroad for growth and, as a trade war rages with the West, they have set their sights on the global south.Hosts: Tom Lee-Devlin, Alice Fulwood and Mike Bird. Guests: Lourdes Casanova of Cornell University and Ong Kian Ming, a Malaysian former deputy minister.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.