Barry's Economics

Gary Stevenson quit a trading job that made him millions and has spent the years since campaigning for a wealth tax, and this week his documentary "How to Get Filthy Rich" airs on Channel 4, Wednesday 8th July at 9pm. Gary came in for a two and a half hour conversation, and this is the first of three episodes we've cut from it. We talk about the billionaire he interviewed who's n...

Why do poorer people love Period Dramas like Downton Abbey, that adore the very Privileged aristocracies that kept their great-grandparents in poverty? Why do we worship Billionaires despite their clear exploitative behaviours? This is the psychology of how shows about the British class system became comfort viewing for the people it should enrage. And how we fall in love with the Myths of the Sup...

Everyone is still trying to take Nigel Farage down... and every attack makes himstronger. Here's the uncomfortable truth: If you attack him: he's already won, and almost nobody hasnoticed why. Farage isn't the disease. He's the symptom. In this video I show that the entire Political strategy of beating him has failed for decades because he isn't competing in the market for poli...

In 1762, the Earl of Sandwich asked for meat between two slices of bread. Did he invent the Sandwich? Maybe Not - As People had been doing this for centuries. But he had power, prestige, and profile, so he got to "name" it. Economics works exactly the same way."Job Creators." "GDP growth." "Trickle-down." These aren't neutral terms but are the stories wr...

For seventy years, the world barely made zombie films. Then, right around the turn of the century, that changed, and we haven't stopped since. The biggest Franchises of all time: The Walking Dead. The Last of Us. Game of Thrones. World War Z. 28 Days Later. Why now? Why all at once? This isn't a video about horror - it's why millions of people, with no coordination between them, starte...

Filmed in front of over 20 original Banksy works across London and Bristol. This is a video about what Banksy keeps showing us, how he actually works, and why (after all this time) he's still relevant and properly revolutionary. And the answer isn't actually "because his prints sell for a lot." In fact it's almost the opposite of that. Most people know Banksy as a street arti...

Elon Musk. Tesla. Spacex. Cybertrucks. Solar Power... not your normal supervillain origin story. But the neuroscience explains everything. Do you remember when we all kind of liked Elon Musk? Electric cars. Space travel. Solar panels. He felt like the closest thing we had to a real-life Tony Stark. And now he's... this. Nobody's asking the right question. Not "what did he do?" bu...

The Wealth Tax Debate Rages OnBack and ForthUp and DownBut what does it miss? And Why Is It Always so Circular and Never Ending? I’m Barry Ferns, a comedian whose personal journey through failure, homelessness, and rebuilding led me to explore the socio and behavioural economics of inequality. This channel digs into how systems of power shape our identity, behaviour, and beliefs, and how we can sh...

This is the only comedian in the world who has actually changed tax law. (as far as I know)Not highlighted it - Changed it. With jokes, a mahogany buffet, and a few hundred letters from members of the public. On Barry's Economics, we spend a lot of time talking about what needs to change; inequality, taxation, who owns what, who decides what. Mark Thomas spent decades actually doing it. This c...

Every Political and Economic debate about poverty and inequality goes the same way. Left says redistribute. Right says grow grow grow. Round and round. Why is it so endlessly circular - and why does nothing ever actually get fixed? One reason could be that there's an entire category of evidence that never makes it into the roomWe account for bias in medicine, law, and aviation. We just don&#39...

We often treat extremely wealthy individuals as if they have a deeper understanding of how the world works. But there is a structural reason to question that assumption. As wealth increases, people become less exposed to many of the constraints and trade-offs that shape everyday life. Research in behavioural science suggests that people rely heavily on their own experience when forming judgments....

Everyone has a take on the manosphere. This isn't one of them. Because the debate you've been watching - the one about men, women, masculinity, feminism, Andrew Tate, Jordan Peterson - isn't actually about any of those things. It's about something else entirely. Something far more boring and far more profitable. The science on this is extraordinary. And nobody is talking about it....

You live in the wealthiest civilisation in human history. And yet - it's not enough, right? That's not a character flaw. It's the system working exactly as designed. This video is about what happens when the right answer becomes the wrong one. And why the neuroscience, the psychology, and the data all say the same thing: beyond a certain point, growth stops converting into wellbeing. T...

The Science Used to Control Your Behaviour....Last week I posted a video abotu Diary of a CEO that got 250,000 views in two days. Last Month I posted a video that now has HALF A MILLION VIEWSAnd the first thing my brain did was whisper: do it again. This video is about the business model of every major social media platform on earth and what that does to viewers (your scroll is not random), what i...

Diary Of A CEO podcast has 50 million listeners. Any of these Success podcasts - the Steven Bartlett or Chris Williamson types all promise you the secrets, strategies and frameworks of the world's most successful people. How to be Successful. Here's the problem: The science says it can't deliver on that promise. And not only that - if you look closely you can see that the business mode...

Everyone is arguing about whether the war on Iran was justified. That might not be the most important question. The deeper question is what happens when powerful actors publicly demonstrate that the rules of the international system don’t apply to them. Rules can feel frustrating. They slow decisions down and constrain power. But they also play a critical role in stabilising cooperation between so...

The people who built social media often don't let their own children use it. These aren't worried parents who don't understand the technology. They're the engineers and executives who built the platforms and saw the internal data. And many of them made the same decision. Not my kids. So why isn't that the end of the argument? This episode looks at why that fact keeps getting ig...

Why does the system feel too big to fight? In this final episode of the Epstein Economy series, Barry explores the neuroscience of learned helplessness. Featuring research from: – Maier & Seligman – Damon Centola – Christakis & Fowler Large systems don’t just concentrate wealth. They concentrate perceived power. But your brain may be underestimating how much influence coordinated action ac...

This video is about the gap between - what you feel about Epstein and what you feel about other, bigger news stories - and why it's not a moral failure. It's neuroscience. Featuring research from Paul Slovic (psychic numbing),Robin Dunbar (the Social Brain Hypothesis), Siddharth Kara (cobalt mining), and Shoshana Zuboff. This is the third video in the series. The first two:1 - Your Brain W...

Why are we so addicted to hunting monsters - and what does that addiction protect? In this video, I explore the neuroscience and psychology behind our obsession with the Epstein scandal. And how the structure that created Epstein remains invisible This is part 2 of a series. Part 1: "Epstein Isn't an Aberration. He's an Inevitable Outcome" Part 3 coming next Sunday. Research Disc...

The Epstein Scandal Should Be Called "The Billionaire Scandal"Everyone thinks Jeffrey Epstein was an aberration. The science says he was inevitable. This video breaks down the neuroscience, psychology, and economics that explain how extreme wealth concentration doesn't just create inequality. but manufactures monsters. I’m Barry Ferns – a comedian whose personal journey through failu...

Your accent isn't just how you sound. It's how you're judged. Within seconds of hearing someone speak, we make snap judgments about intelligence, trustworthiness, class, and competence. And we pretend we don't. What happens for you when Gary Stevenson's working-class voice has a posh accent? Why received pronunciation makes people sound more trustworthy (even when they're l...

There's a story running in the background of your mind right now. You didn't start it. You didn't agree to it. And it's ruining your life. That story has a headquarters: Wall Street. A place where the myth that "greed is good" isn't just believed, it's acted out, every single day. But here's what most people don't know: stories aren't just entertainmen...

Your rent is up. Your bills are unpaid. But the government says the economy is FINE. Why? The answer is one of the simplest mathematical illusions in politics: GDP and averages. GDP was invented in the 1940s to measure wartime tank production. It doesn't care about your quality of life. It doesn't care who gets the money. It just measures "busy-ness" - and billionaires walking in...

This video isn’t about attacking Rory Stewart, or about bad faith, stupidity, or intent. It’s about something more uncomfortable... and much more common. Some of the biggest mistakes in modern politics and economics aren’t made by extremists or idiots. They’re made by intelligent, well-meaning people who all make the same mistake at the same time, and don’t notice it. Decision science has a word f...