The extraordinary pulling power of Conor McGregor can be measured in a few ways: by ticket sales, by pay-per-view revenue, and by endorsements. However, a much more instructive modern metric is the use of pornography. And it looks like McGregor porn beats regular porn hands down! More

When the gruesome Francisco Pizarro encountered the extraordinary empire of the Incas in 1532 one of the many things that fascinated him was the Inca’s postal service. The Incas had an elaborate system of runners who ran for up to eights hours from zone to zone bringing messages from the rulers to their subjects. The speed and endurance of these runners amazed the Spaniards. Of course, the runners were chewing cocoa leaves, rudimentary cocaine. More

What happens in America tends to be repeated in other countries a few years later. The big socio-economic trends play out first in the United States, then drift across the Ocean and repeat themselves in a local form here. That’s the received wisdom. More

There is an obvious solution to Dublin’s capacity problem: move Dublin Port and develop the greatest natural asset the city has into a new gleaming city. We are one of the last major cities to have a port on the most valuable prime land. Capacity constraints are now the biggest threat to Ireland’s prosperity — much more than Brexit. More

Did you know that Limerick has seen the biggest jump in income in the past decade? Not Dublin. Limerick. More

Looking out to sea at the huge winter waves crashing upon the Cape Town shore, it’s hard to imagine what the first local tribesman thought when he saw, in the distance, Vasco De Gama’s tiny Portuguese ship sail round the Cape of Good Hope, heading out towards the Indian Ocean in search of profit. More

All over the world, central bankers have hinted that the great 10-year period of very low interest rates is coming to an end and all over the world, millennials are complaining that they can’t make a decent crust. Are these developments linked? If so, what does it mean? More