Episodes

Feb. 26, 2024

Brussels - Muscles or Mussels?

This week, Will is just back from Brussels after addressing the European parliament on media and technology and, well, he’s doesn't see too impressed with his first visit since Brexit. And given we’ve discussed super stocks l...

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Feb. 19, 2024

Super Fans Meet Super Stocks

This week Richard puts Will on the hot seat, and review all his amazing work on the economics of the music industry, something that is a lot smaller than everyone imagines, even if it touches all of us deeply. For more on Bub...

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Feb. 12, 2024

All Your Eggs in One Big Tech Basket

This week we get into portfolio theory, or lack of, as for many the rush to big tech and wilful ignorance of everything else Wall Street has to offer seems to be the rule as opposed to the exception. Why is that, and is it su...

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Feb. 5, 2024

Constructing Bubbles with David Trainer

This week we’re going to keep on pricking bubbles with a fellow cynic of the sycophants and stenographers. Here to help us is David Trainer of New Constructs, whose company makes “robo-adjustments” to the reported accounts of...

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Jan. 29, 2024

Hugh You Looking At

Our guest this week is Hugh Hendry, a man who found fortunes walking the tightropes as booms turned to busts. Founder and CIO of Eclectica Asset Management, London, a Global Macro Hedge Fund, from 2002 to 2017, where its “hi...

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Jan. 22, 2024

Advertising Icebergs

One of the giant iceberg industries - it's all around us but we don’t really see it - is advertising. Frequently touted as the first to suffer, first to recover on the economic cycle, but also counter cyclical, since you nee...

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Jan. 15, 2024

Smoke Signals for '24

With 340-odd days ahead, what are the smoke signals - good and bad - that you need to be aware of? Today we look forward, and make sense of the madness ahead of us in 2024. For more on Bubble Trouble, including transcripts of...

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Jan. 8, 2024

Big Brother Bubbles with Sir Peter Bazalgette

This week we’re in conversation with a special guest, someone who The Independent argued that he may be “the most influential man in British television.” Sir Peter Bazalegette. The man who brought Big Brother to our screens d...

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Jan. 1, 2024

Water Works with Feargal Sharkey

Today, we turn our attention to a massive credit bubble that burst and dumped toxic sewage in the form of shell companies and endless debt on public utilities. A scandal is unfolding at Thames Water - London’s waterworks tha...

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Dec. 18, 2023

Bubble Trouble Wrapped 2023

This week we want to wrap up a stellar year of topics, guests and unimaginable bubbly behavior, and not just of the kind of champagne at holiday parties. For more on Bubble Trouble, including transcripts of the show, visit us...

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Dec. 11, 2023

A Global History of Financial Bubbles

Economics wont get you a lot of spicy dates… but we delve into a fantastically accessible book that compliments this podcast like gin and tonic. This week we’re going to be in conversation with the authors of "Boom and Bust: ...

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Dec. 4, 2023

In Conversation with Former Enron CFO Andy Fastow Part Two

This week wrap up our conversation with Andy Fastow, the former CFO of Enron. [Part 2 of 2] For more on Bubble Trouble, including transcripts of the show, visit us online at http://bubbletroublepodcast.com You can learn more ...

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Nov. 27, 2023

In Conversation with Former Enron CFO Andy Fastow Part One

This week we take you back to one of the biggest bubble bursting in living memory, Enron, which went from Americas 7th largest company to bankrupt within a year at the turn of the millennium. How many booms, busts, frauds and financial irregularities have we witnessed since? Now, 100 episodes in, w…

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Nov. 20, 2023

When Bubbles Become Clouds

This week we’re going to tap into a topic that’s been ignored to date - the excitement that surrounds the big three cloud services of Microsoft (Azure), Google (GCP) and the market leader Amazon AWS. Are we getting ahead of o...

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Nov. 13, 2023

Solving for X with Alex Kantrowitz

This week we turn to the unavoidable Mr Musk and his beached fail whale, X, formerly known as Twitter. Did he take something mediocre and make it worse? Was it deliverate sabotage, or willful ignorance? Blunder or bluster, me...

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Nov. 6, 2023

A Call for Activism

This week we look at that special "class" of investors who are busy raising their heads again to challenge management in a time of turmoil: the activist. Who are they, what gives them power and when they wield that power what...

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Oct. 30, 2023

A Techno Realist’s Manifesto

This week we look at one of the noisiest self promoters on the VC carnival barker circuit, a man who famously said software eats the world when he has stocked his portfolio with software companies, with some wild claims about...

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Oct. 23, 2023

Private Equity Plays Pass the Parcel

This week we turn our attention back to private markets where Richard’s prior smoke signals may be bearing fruit. That is, we’re getting reports that private equity is playing pass the parcel: selling assets to themselves tha...

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Oct. 16, 2023

Talking Audiobooks

We know why you, our audience, listen to podcasts... to impress friends at dinner parties. Now waht about extending a 35 minute pod to a 15 hour audiobook? And that’s where we’re turning our attention to today, audiobooks hav...

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Oct. 9, 2023

What’s Going to Burst First?

This week, its just Will quizzing Richard with an ocean separating their microphones, as Will squeezes that thirty year veteran of the markets like a sponge to get us all up to speed on whether those bubbles are building ever...

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Oct. 2, 2023

After the Goldrush

Bubble Trouble has spent 90+ episodes in the studios exposing sycophants and stenographers. More recently, we went from the studio to the stage, with both of us top billing the Financial Times Weekend Festival at Kenwood Hous...

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Sept. 25, 2023

Gatekeepers and Regulatory Bubbles

This week we turn to regulatory bubbles and the new buzz word: Gatekeepers! What are they, and what are they not and what gates do they actually keep? In forty five days, the European Commission drummed up an answer, while th...

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Sept. 18, 2023

The Complicated Dance Around ARM with James Ashton

This week James Ashton joins us to talk about the complicated dance around the re-listing of ARM in the first tech IPO in some time. Few IPOs come this big, and few have had to revise down their target market price so quickly...

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Sept. 11, 2023

AI and Digital Doppelgangers with Jessica Powell

You may have heard about the recent collaboration between Drake and The Weeknd that wasn't a real collaboration, but an AI-generated fake. This incident is a canary in the coalmine not just for the music industry, but any cre...

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