{"podcast":{"title":"The Peter McCormack Show","slug":"the-peter-mccormack-show-525419","podcast_index_feed_id":525419,"rss_url":"https://feeds.acast.com/public/shows/69d4f193b76468caacc5068f","website_url":"https://www.petermccormack.com/","image_url":"https://assets.pippa.io/shows/69d4f193b76468caacc5068f/show-cover.jpg","author":"Peter McCormack","episode_count":1075,"summary":"The Peter McCormack Show - politics, macro, Bitcoin and AI, long-form interviews. Twice-weekly conversations about money, power, and the shifts reshaping the next decade. Peter McCormack interviews politicians, economists, investors, journalists, founders and Bitcoiners. Past guests include Liz Truss, Lyn Alden, Curtis Yarvin, Matt Goodwin, Mike Green, Balaji Srinivasan, Rupert Lowe, Firas Modad, Scott Horton, Jeff Booth, Connor Leahy, Andrea Miotti, Neema Parvini, Dr Tim Gregory and Simon Dixon. Recurring threads: the debt and inflation endgame, UK political collapse and what comes after, Reform and the populist wave, the Middle East and the American war machine, AI safety and the race for superintelligence, energy and net zero, Bitcoin adoption and policy, and the slow-motion decline of Western institutions. Long-form - most episodes run 60 to 120 minutes. New episodes 2 to 3 times per week. Video on YouTube and Spotify. Host: Peter McCormack, a retired rapper from Bedford, UK, trying to understand this crazy world. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.","last_synced_at":"2026-07-31T06:19:00.527164+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-peter-mccormack-show-525419"},"episode":{"title":"#186 - Rupert Russell - The Global Game of Money & Power","slug":"186-rupert-russell-the-global-game-of-money-power","published_at":"2026-06-21T17:51:42+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-peter-mccormack-show-525419/186-rupert-russell-the-global-game-of-money-power","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-peter-mccormack-show-525419","url":"https://shows.acast.com/the-peter-mccormack-show/episodes/186-rupert-russell-prices-power-the-global-game-of-money","audio_url":"https://sphinx.acast.com/p/open/s/69d4f193b76468caacc5068f/e/6a37ecdd4a8189f2c37634a7/media.mp3","summary":"Rupert Russell joins me to discuss the hidden power of prices, the chaos of financial markets and whether the economy is really just a global game of Monopoly. Rupert explains how price shocks have shaped history, from bread riots and the Arab Spring to housing, oil, food and the financial crisis. We discuss derivatives, futures markets, commodity speculation, Goldman Sachs, central banks, inflation, asset managers and why the price of essential goods can become politically explosive. We also get into AI, scarcity, status, the future of work, whether the price system breaks in a world of abundance, and why Rupert thinks The Matrix is a better model for our future than Terminator or Ready Player One. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - TIMESTAMPS: 00:00:00 - Is the Economy Just a Game? 00:00:56 - The Horror of Our Economic System 00:01:39 - Why Prices Shape History 00:05:15 - The Sandpile Theory of Society 00:07:38 - How Governments Manipulate Prices 00:12:00 - Housing and the Broken Social Contract 00:16:10 - How Derivatives Began 00:19:36 - Futures, Farmers and Speculators 00:23:24 - When Insurance Became Gambling 00:27:02 - The Road to the Financial Crisis 00:32:18 - Hayek, Friedman and Price Signals 00:36:20 - How Food Became Financialised 00:41:23 - What Pushes Food Prices Up? 00:49:13 - Did Global Markets Break Economics? 00:54:08 - What Is the Real Price? 01:03:57 - Who Really Runs the Economy? 01:11:28 - The Global Game of Monopoly 01:19:24 - Is the Market Now Correlated to AI? 01:36:14 - AI and the End of Scarcity 01:50:06 - Terminator, Matrix or Ready Player One? - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - CONTACT PETE › Website – http://pete…","meta_description":"Rupert Russell joins me to discuss the hidden power of prices, the chaos of financial markets and whether the economy is really just a global game of Mono…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":7177,"processing_state":"not_requested","actions":[{"name":"request_transcript","method":"POST","url":"https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/the-peter-mccormack-show-525419/episodes/186-rupert-russell-the-global-game-of-money-power/transcription-requests","description":"Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode."},{"name":"read_markdown","method":"GET","url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-peter-mccormack-show-525419/186-rupert-russell-the-global-game-of-money-power.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}