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Multipolarity

Multipolarity

Charting The Rise Of A Multipolar World Order

Philip Pilkington is an unorthodox macroeconomist.

Andrew Collingwood is an equally skeptical journalist.

Lately, both have realised that - post-Ukraine, post-Afghanistan withdrawal - the old, unipolar, US-led world order is in its death throes.

In its wake, something new is being born. But what shape will that take? That will depend on a combustible combination of economics and geopolitics; trade and military muscle.

Each week, our duo take three off-radar news stories and explain how each is shaping our multipolar reality.

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  • 27 episodes
  • weekly
  • Avg 48 min
  • English

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Episodes 27

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  • S1 · E187
    May 7 · 11 min

    Merz Sadist Bends, Bond Villain, Slick Dealing

    Remember Olaf Scholz? Just about? Remember when he sunk to the lowest opinion poll rating in German political history? Well the good news for anonymous hopeless former Chancellors is that the next beige technocrat in charge of Germany has just beaten his record. Plunging to 89% dissatisfied – with only 11% satisfied. Even with Macron as the most unpopular President ever, Starmer the least popular Prime Minister, Merz is more unpopular still. Our lead question this week is very simple: what the flaming fuck is going on in Germany? Meanwhile, more news just in on Europe’s cordless bungee ride: UK bond yields have spiked again. To 5.3% - the highest rate since 1998. They can’t go any higher – right? In the four years since the Truss contagion blew up the markets by hitting 5% and toppled the government, it’s a good thing the UK Treasury used that period to stop running massive deficits… right? Finally, the global oil market is beginning to resemble Argentina under Kirschner. You’ve got your official prices; and then your real prices. As reality continues to diverge from the markets, we’re asking: who is this mysterious Whale of Hormuz who keeps on fiddling with the international price mechanism? Of course, this being a pay week, you’ll need to sign up on Patreon or Substack if you want to hear that bit - only the real heads get to dine on the whole hog. That’s easily done - simply go to Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/multipolarity) or Substack (https://multipolaritypod.substack.com/) and sign up. It’s 8 or 12 dollars respectively, and you can cancel any time you like….

  • S1 · E186
    April 30 · 42 min

    Multipolarity Dialogues: George Yeo On How Singapore Navigates Between China and America

    After weeks of Iran drumbeats - time for something a bit different. George Yeo is the former Foreign Minister of Singapore Educated at University of Cambridge and later at Harvard Business School, he's a former Brigadier-General in the nation's Air Force, and one of its most distinctive strategic thinkers - a man whose career tracks the rise of modern Asia itself. Yeo served in government for over two decades, holding key portfolios including Trade and Industry. As Singapore’s Foreign Minister from 2004 to 2011, he played a central role in shaping the country’s global posture. Since leaving frontline politics, Yeo has become a widely followed voice on geopolitics, civilisational identity, and the shifting balance of power in Asia. We wanted to ask him about the view from Singapore. Singaporean diplomats are renowned for their coolheaded, realist approach. They are highly skilled - and they have to be. A unique fragment of the complex geometry of South East Asia, Singapore has to balance its warm relations with the West, its unmatched status as a trading hub, and the rise of the Goliath on its doorstep - China.

  • S1 · E185
    April 23 · 42 min

    Nothing Beats a Jet2 Holiday, It's A Kind Of Magyar, New York Slop Exchange

    The hot question this summer: Can you bring your own jerry can of diesel onto an EasyJet? As all the major airlines begin to cancel flights, bump surcharges, and post losses, the looming fuel crisis is finally hitting landfall - in the skies. Meanwhile, Hungary’s Prime Minister elect, Péter Magyar, has decided he wants to unilaterally remove the country’s President and the head of the Constitutional Court. Another win for Democracy and the Rule of Law. As his administration takes flesh, Magyar has declared that he will arrest Benjamin Netanyahu – last seen touring Budapest in May – the next time he enters the country. The International Criminal Court wants a word with BiBi, and the new regime is keen to be seen as a responsible global citizen. But what Magyar doesn’t seem to know is that this is an EU stalking horse for pulling him back into line, by linking it with another man with a price on his head – Vladimir Putin. Finally, the bot singularity is coming for the markets. Turns out it’s not just journalists and email jobbers who are quietly outsourcing their work to LLMs. Market traders are increasingly sloppi ng out on the S&P. For now, this is about capturing delta. But what happens when everyone on the internet is a dog?

  • S1 · E184
    April 16 · 52 min

    New Kid On The Blockade, Tisza Trailer

    Trump blockades a blockade. The world holds its breath: will the Iranians blockade the blockade of the blockade? Are we destined for battleship Tetris piling up in the Gulf? Or is this just one more instance of the real war being the PR one? Then, with his Fidesz party reduced to a rump, what happens when the lynchpin of anti-Brussels energy falls out? The EU threw everything at Orbán, and it has paid off handsomely. Ursula von der Leyen clearly had her speech about moving to qualified majority voting written before the polls closed. Beyond a cost of living election in a landlocked medium-sized country, this is a story about the future of the EU. Apres Viktor, le deluge… IMPORTANT A Note on Substack You might already know that we have a Substack, and we’re growing it. (multipolaritypod.substack.com) We’ve run into a small issue, in that lately, a few people have been signing up on Substack, with the intent of getting the premium episodes of the podcast - which have so far been exclusive to Patreon. So we’ve decided to take the premium podcast to Substack, and bundle it with a new range of articles we’re in the process of producing. The deal is this - The Substack will be $12 a month - that will get you the podcast and then various paywalled articles on top. We’re not paywalling the Substack yet - all the pieces you can presently read are free of charge - but we have plans to start gating the odd piece. And as we said, we will gate the premium podcast on Substack. Of course, if you’re an existing subscriber, you can do whatever you like - Patreon, or Substack. The one gives you the pod only. The other will give you both. Obviously, your price won’t change unless you change platforms. So there’s no need to do anything.

  • S1 · E183
    April 9 · 46 min

    Multipolarity Dialogues: Malcom Kyeyune on The Annihilation Gamble

    Annihilation - no more. On Tuesday, the world was saved at five minutes to midnight. For the next two weeks, at least… But while the power plants are safe for now, the tragi-comic spectacle conflict in Iran has poked bigger holes in the global defence-industrial system. No one knows this better than Malcom Kyeyune, the Mad Mullah of Malmö, who is back on the pod to take a victory lap, after predicting much of what was to come in the first week of the war. This comes fresh on the back of his new essay in UnHerd - https://unherd.com/2026/04/the-twilight-of-americas-sky-knights/ - where he compares the US dilemma with the strategy of the Hussites in the earliest Reformation wars.

  • S1 · E182
    April 2 · 11 min

    Premium Multipolarity: Iran On The Home Front - Europe Under Economic Siege

    1973. Beyond the war, we’re hacking into the coming implications of the major energy crisis that’s brewing - as the last tankers to leave the Gulf trundle into the ports of Europe. From Volkswagen to venture capital, we’ll be charting what life looks like with oil at 150 or 200 dollars a barrel. Energy lockdowns. Rationing. Bond crises. All of these are being whispered in the press right now. As much as our leaders dare. But this is still the Ardennes Forest in spring 1940. Eerily quiet. Soon enough, the flamethrowers will burn through the Old Continent, and then begin to ricochet back onto America itself. Will this break up the order we once took for granted? Are we at the end of the US consumption model of economics? Will resource rich Canada end up speared by its bigger brother? We’ll be taking a grand view from the sidelines, as we start to figure out how to live through the latest version of the polycrisis - after 2008, after Covid, after Ukraine - this is the next major re-shaping of the world we live in. Of course, this is a premium Multipolarity episode - so you’ll have to be on the Patreon list if you want to listen to the full episode. That’s easily done - simply go to Patreon and sign up. It’s 8 dollars, and you can cancel any time you like….

  • S1 · E181
    March 26 · 1 hr 5 min

    Multipolarity Dialogues: The Middle East Is Being Re-Made, But Not In The Way America Thinks with Policy Tensor

     Multipolarity Dialogues is a series of interviews that scan the geopolitical horizon. We talk to some of the sharpest analysts, think as an experts about how they see the world beyond the visible edge of the geopolitical. Now, is Iran actually winning this war, or is the US slowly pounding it to bits with its air power? Will there be a land invasion? Could a land invasion even succeed? How are the oil markets gonna react? What are the likely economic consequences of this war? How will it affect the US midterms? All these are questions that are being discussed to death on the super giant gossip chambers that are the mainstream and social media. But what is less discussed is the big picture geopolitical change that is occurring before our eyes. We at Multipolarity already suggested that this war means that Taiwan is a lost cause to the United States. Is that true though? And what would it mean for the overall US strategic posture? Most importantly, what is going to happen in the Middle East, which itself is a theatre of great importance. Nobody in the public sphere has shown a better understanding of the academic literature on these matters than Anusar Farooqui, better known as Policy Tensor (@policytensor). He is a prolific tweeter and essayist on geopolitics and geoeconomics and grand strategy, and for that reason his X account has just exploded with followers in the last three weeks. We had to welcome him back on to the show...

Showing 21–27 of 27 episodes