Here's How ::: Ireland's Political, Social and Current Affairs Podcast

***** Now that the dust has settled after the election, congratulations to all the candidates, all 686 of them. Congratulations to everyone from Pearse Doherty who got 18,898 first preference votes in Donegal, all the way down to Seán O’Leary who stood for election in Wicklow and got nine votes. Pearse Doherty got that massive […]

Wendy Grace is a presenter on Spirit Radio and the director of a communications training company. *****

Professor Colin O’Gara is Head of Addiction Services at St. John of God Hospital and author of the book Gambling Addiction In Ireland: Causes Consequences and Recovery. ***** There is a pattern, I suppose it’s so well-known that it’s a cliché, of people mellowing their view as they get older. One version is the famous […]

Cormac Lucey is an economics columnist at Sunday Times (Ireland), and lecturer in finance, at the Irish Management Institute, Chartered Accountants Ireland and Trinity College Dublin. *** And we’re back! Sorry about the unannounced little hiatus for the podcast. I’ll tell you a bit more about it, but first just to say I’m lining up […]

Mathew Creighton is associate professor of sociology at UCD. ***** I’ve been on a low-information diet. I suppose I’m someone who is generally pretty well-informed but sometimes that can get a bit too much, so a few months ago I just tuned out, deleted all my news apps, Twitter – while it still had the […]

Andrew Wright is a fourth generation dairy farmer near Omagh in Co Tyrone, with a big following on Tiktok. We talked about this video he published. ***** In the world of what used to be called PR, these days they call themselves other things, information management or whatever. PR has PR’d itself. In the world […]

David Maddox is the political editor of Express Online. ***** Kevin and myself always appreciate feedback from listeners, we try to reply when we can, but Aengus Ryan send in a sound file, which is great cos I can include it in the podcast. I think this is an important question, and I think that […]

Pádraig Mac Lochlainn is Sinn Féin’s chief whip. *****

Mario Rosenstock is a comedian and impressionist, and creator of TodayFM’s Gift Grub. ***** Here’s something about the Chinese economy. China’s ‘investment’ in real estate makes Ireland’s property obsession seem breezy and carefree. Just before our crash, 12 per cent of our economy was house-building. Even if Chinese GDP figures are true, then their reliance […]

Ben Habib is one of the deputy leaders of Reform UK, the new name for The Brexit Party founded by Nigel Farage. I misspoke during the interview, I wrongly said that Reginald Dyer, the butcher of Amritsar, was Jewish. I should have said that Edwin Montagu, the Liberal MP and Secretary for India, who did […]

Aubrey McCarthy is the founder and chairman of Tiglin, a charity that provides services to homeless people. ***** I listen to podcasts quite a bit in arrears. I’m not too worried about being current, I suppose, and I was just listening to a David McWilliams podcast from August, he was talking about the banks, not […]

James Ker-Lindsay is Visiting Professor at the London School of Economics. His research focuses on conflict, peace and security in South East Europe (Western Balkans, Greece, Turkey and Cyprus), European Union enlargement, and secession and recognition in international politics. ***** Donald Trump is going to jail. That’s a whole big story in itself, the reason why Donald […]

Janie Lazar is the chair of End of Life Ireland. ***** Some people have said some things about my level of political insight, thanks to them, even if I don’treally think it’s that impressive most of the time. Actually, whatever level of insight that I do have, Ithink is just down to two habits. One […]

Josie Appleton is the director of the Manifesto Club. ***** You might think that you’re not familiar with the CE symbol, but you probably are, I’m sure you’ve seen it thousands of times. I can’t show you a picture of it in audio format, but the symbol is two semi-circles, the first one making a […]

Pauline O’Reilly is the Green Party spokesperson on Education and Higher Education and Senator and the cathaoirleach of the Green Party. ***** I heard Mark O’Halloran on an old episode the Mario Rosenstock Podcast recently, he talked very articulately about how the housing crisis affects him, how he as a man in his 50s has […]

Repeats on podcasts don’t always make a lot of sense, but if you are subscribed, you’ll know that I put up a podcast from 2019 into the feed again last week; the podcast was an investigation into RTÉ and their relationship with the AA which supplied them with AA Roadwatch, the erstwhile traffic news segments. […]

I think that it’s about time to hear this edition of the podcast from 2019 again. Dr Michael Foley is professor emeritus at the school of media at TU Dublin – formerly DIT – also a member of the NUJ’s Ethics Council, and has been invited by the International federation of Journalists and UNESCO to […]

Uki Goñi is a historian, journalist and author who has lived in the United States, Ireland, and Argentina. ***** Sometimes it helps to draw a parallel between two events in the news, but two big recent stories – in Ireland, the scandal of RTÉ lying about Ryan Tubridy’s salary, and internationally the over-before-it-began apparent coup […]

James Ker-Lindsay is Visiting Professor at the London School of Economics. His research focuses on conflict, peace and security in South East Europe (Western Balkans, Greece, Turkey and Cyprus), European Union enlargement, and secession and recognition in international politics. He has created many Youtube videos explaining his subject. ***** The Financial Times recently made a […]

Freda Wallace is the cohost of the Gender Nebulous podcast. Statistics of the sharp rise in the number of referrals to the Tavistock clinic, and their age distribution are here, and here. False claims that puberty blockers, given to children to delay typical-age puberty are ‘completely reversable’ are incredibly common, and have been made by the taxpayer-funded […]