Dr. Alan O'Sullivan

So the voice you just heard there was Professor Donegha Blackhawne.

And I finished an interesting conversation with Donegha just now.

And that will be released this week.

So coming to you a little later than usually planned.

I usually release this on a Friday, but...

Events in the Middle East and a couple of announcements relating to the channel meant that we just delayed it slightly.

So stay tuned for some very interesting announcements in relation to the newsletter and also the rollout of our new website specifically for the Most Important Things podcast.

So you're going to want to stay tuned for that.

Professor Toneko Bakwine is an expert in post-Soviet politics and a number of other issues.

He is a professor at the DCU School of Law and Government.

And our conversation was very deep across several topics.

Vladimir Putin, interestingly enough, featured quite a lot.

And any discussion around financial markets, global economy, geopolitics, he features very...

centrally and all of that.

So Donica won an essay competition and he ended up in Eastern Germany in 1989, a few months before the Berlin Wall came down.

He ended up in Dresden and interestingly enough, Vladimir Putin was in Dresden at the same time as Donica was.

So that was something that was interesting that came about.

So stay tuned for more of Donica later in the episode.

But what I want to talk to you about now is, of course, what's going on in financial markets.

And to do so, I'm going to use the newsletter.