Colm Flynn Podcast

In this powerful episode, I sit down with Melody Herzfeld, the drama teacher at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School who bravely hid and protected her students during the 2018 Parkland shooting, where 17 lives were tragically lost. She shares her harrowing story from that day, the split-second decisions that saved lives, and how she has helped her students heal through music and art. This conversation is about courage in the face of terror, the resilience of young people, and the enduring pow...

Plane crashes and aviation accidents stir up some of our greatest fears. The idea of being trapped inside a machine 30,000 feet in the air, traveling at hundreds of miles an hour, when something goes wrong and it's completely out of our power to fix it. And even though flying is one of the safest forms of travel today, people have a fascination with what happens when disaster strikes and a pilot has to try and save the lives of hundreds of people on board. Emmet Feerick is the founder...

While almost every other aircraft in the United States was being grounded, Colonel Mark Tillman was pushing his throttles full force ahead to get Air Force One into the air as quickly as possible. Behind him, inside the flying White House, was President George W. Bush - coming to terms with the fact that America was under attack, the deadliest hit since Pearl Harbor. Captain Mark Tillman had one of the most important jobs in America on September 11th 2001, to ensure the safety of ...

Growing up in the projects in New Jersey, Steven Allbright knew his father was involved in the mafia. From FBI agents spying through their windows, to his dad asking him to take mysterious bags down to the local bar. And as they say, like father, like son, and when Steven grew up he copied many of his father's habits with alcohol, drugs, and women. Struggling with alcohol addiction, Steven managed to hold down a good job, and worked as private security for some of the biggest names in Hollywo...

The idea of death is something most of us never like to talk about. It can be so heartbreaking to be at a funeral and watch a family grieving over a lost loved one. And because of the pain we feel when we think about those we know someday dying, we normally avoid the topic. But for Irishman Ronan Conneely, he is surrounded by death everyday. At 22-year-old, he is one of Ireland's youngest embalmers. And in this podcast interview, he tells Colm about how he started working in the family busine...

Can you imagine growing up blind and being bullied in school, and thinking you were the problem because you were blind? That was Ollie Cantos' life. But it was thanks to some tough love from his parents that made him realise his full potential, leading to him working as an Associate Director for Domestic Policy at the White House, and then a civil rights attorney for the Department of Education. Career success aside, he focused on his personal life and deeply wanted a family. But he never ima...

Mountain Butorac was working in IT in Atlanta, Georgia, but wasn't passionate about his job. Growing in his faith, he knew he wanted to do something connected with his Catholicism but wasn't sure what. That was until one day when he took a trip to Italy and fell in love! He fell in love with the ancient architecture and history, delicious pasta and pizza, and the slower pace of life. When he returned to the USA he quit his job, started a tour company, and eventually moved his family to Italy....

Tighe Dixon is originally from Dublin in Ireland, and growing up didn't always have it easy. He came from a family that, although loving, had problems with alcohol and drug addiction. As a child he would go in and out of prison visiting his father and other relatives, often wondering why life was like this. When it came time for him to forge his own path in life he looked around and wondered would his fate be the same. But instead, he decided he was going to be the one to make a change and br...

Diana Bunici is a talented Irish journalist and broadcaster who made a name for herself presenting a popular children's TV show on RTÈ, the national broadcaster. From the outset it seemed like she had it all; a dream job, on the cover of magazines, and a great boyfriend. But when you hear her story of how she got to where she is today, it's much more impressive and interesting. Diana grew up in rural Moldova in Eastern Europe. Money was scare, life was simple, and opportunities were few and f...

Alan Clarke is an Irish social media influencer and podcast host who has built an impressive following over the past number of years. His live podcast stage shows, 'Big News Coming Soon', has been filling venues right around Ireland, not just in his home county of Mayo. And in this episode of the Colm Flynn Podcast, Alan talks about the reality behind why he started the live shows, and how much work goes into each episode. He also opens up about his personal life and the fact he dropped out o...

Finn Boylan is an Irish filmmaker from Bray in Co. Wicklow. He has always had a strong interest in the history of wars and conflicts around the world, feeling a fascination with places of unrest. When the war broke out in Ukraine in 2022 he had just started filmmaking and felt a strong urge that he had to travel to Ukraine and capture what was happening. Finn realised history was being made and he wanted to play his part. But nothing could have prepared him for what he would witness over the ...

David Harper is a broadcaster from the UK, working with networks like the BBC World Service. In fact, his voice can often be heard reading news live to millions of people around the world. He also covers a wide range of stories for other TV and radio networks in the UK. He has a passion for what he does! But his job can be very demanding and high-pressured at times, and being a freelancer the work can be unstable. But what makes David's situation a bit more difficult, is that he suffers from...

The name Lucy Letby has now become a name associated with pure evil. The story that has shocked and horrified England, and people all over the world is something you wouldn’t find in even the worst horror movies. A young nurse murdering tiny babies while working in the neonatal unit of a UK hospital. Instead of caring for the most vulnerable, she was injecting them with air, milk, and insulin.. And in one case, even inserting a sharp instrument into a baby’s throat to try and make it bl...

Growing up in a dysfunctional family in the UK, Lucy Barnes felt lost and unloved as a child. Her mother wasn't able to be the kind of mother a child needs, and Lucy had five siblings from five different fathers. So the concept of a solid loving family was something she never experienced from a young age. Men were constantly coming and going in their home, and Lucy often found herself in difficult and dangerous situations. Eventually things got so bad, when she was 13 she kicked out of her ho...

Jordan Pulmano is a filmmaker from California who specialises in shooting music videos and festivals. His work has brought him all over the United States, and to other parts of the world. But back in 2017 he got a call to film a music festival that would go down in history, but for all the wrong reasons. 'Fyre Festival' was billed as a glamorous, exclusive, and one-of-a-kind music festival which was to be held on an island in the Bahamas. Jordan was really excited to go and film with h...

Emily Mais is a writer and an author who, after losing her mother to cancer, decided to reevaluate her life and change the things that didn't make her happy. Like so many other people her age, she was at a point in life with a steady long-term boyfriend, a good job, and a nice apartment in Toronto, but ultimately wasn't happy. It took losing her mother to help her realise that life is short, and you only get one chance at things. So, with no real plan or agenda, she left her home in Canada, c...

All his life Tanner Charles has been running towards the very thing that people most people run away from, Tornadoes! Since he was a teenager he has been a passionate storm chaser, constantly trying to get closer and closer to the danger. From Minnesota, Tanner now produces Youtube videos where he follows violent and destructive storms, sometimes driving for hours just to see one. In this podcast interview, Tanner tells Colm about his love of seeing Tornadoes hit land and experie...

Louise Cooney is one of Ireland's most successful social media stars, with almost a quarter of a million followers on Instagram alone. But behind the seemingly always glamorous lifestyle online, in this episode of the Colm Flynn podcast, Louise talks about the hard work that goes into building a brand and business. She talks about the pros and cons of being self employed and the kind of challenges she faced when launching a new clothing band, Cloo Active. In this interview Louise also opens u...

In this episode of the Colm Flynn Podcast, I chat to Irish social media influencer and reality TV star, Cormac Murphy. Living in New York City, Cormac featured in the first season of 'Love Island' on CBS and also appeared on the E4 show of 'Celebs Go Dating' in the UK. But behind the chiselled instagram pictures and seemingly perfect life in the US, Cormac was secretary battling with addiction and depression. His addiction to alcohol and drugs became so bad that his family eventually had to i...

Bláithín Ennis is an incredibly talented Irish fashion designer, specialising in jewellery and accessories. Her work is sold in some of Ireland's top retail outlets, and has been worn by celebrities around the world. From Wexford in the south east of Ireland, in this episode, Bláithín tells Colm about where her love of fashion and creating came from, and how she landed a dream internship working with Diane von Furstenberg in New York. She also talks about what it's like running her own fashio...

Welcome to season 2 of the Colm Flynn Podcast! Dara Tah is an Irish Youtuber and Ticktocker who has shot to internet fame in recent months. But overnight success has come after years of hard work, and in this interview Dara tells Colm about some of his more daring YouTube videos like visiting Area 51, staying the night in a haunted castle, being buried alive, and gives an honest account of what goes in to making a viral hit. instagram.com/colmflynnire

Kevin Briggs has stood, sometimes for hours late at night, in the freezing cold mist on the Golden Gate Bridge. The routine became all-too familiar for Kevin. Talking to someone who had climbed the barrier of San Francisco's iconic bridge and who was about to jump to the choppy waters below. With no formal training in negotiation, or how to handle depression or suicide, he would carefully navigate conversations with these individuals who stood there in the wind at the lowest point in their li...

Shaun Doherty was, for 30 years, a hugely successful broadcaster in Donegal, Ireland. Every day he presented the main talk show on Highland Radio. Over three decades he became a household name in the region and won multiple awards for his work. But one day, he announced live on air, that he would be leaving his job in radio, and pursuing something else. Now, in this exclusive interview, Shaun talks to Colm Flynn about why he decided to walk away from the success he had, and move to Rom...

Brooke Brodack was once the most subscribed YouTuber in the world but suddenly deleted her channel and disappeared from all social media. It was 2005 and YouTube was still a new website. Then a 19 year old girl from Holden, Massachusetts, created a channel called 'Brookers' where she uploaded videos of herself hanging around the house, doing funny sketches, and just being creative. Her channel took off and gained over 60,000 subscribers, at one point being the most-subscribed ch...

BONUS MATERIAL Marty Cooper is nothing more than a living legend. Back in the early 70's, he and a small team of engineers at Motorola changed the course of history forever when they developed the first every handheld portable cellphone. Motorola wasn’t a big company at the time and was up against the biggest company in the world, AT&T, who were pushing their own invention that was a car phone. It was really a case of David and Goliath as the two companies went head to head for the future...

Can you imagine living on a tropical island in the south Pacific Ocean? A paradise on Earth where life moves at a slower rate. That's where my guest for this episode lives and works. Sanya Ruggiero is a consultant communications advisor who works with the UN and other organisations. She is now working on a UN project to provide Covid relief to small business and freelancers in Fiji and neighbouring islands. She is also working on a project to clear radioactive waste left on the Marshall Islan...

Lisa Murphy is 31 and from Cork in the south of Ireland, and if you met her you would be taken by her warm and bubbly personality. On the face of it she looks like a 'normal' happy young woman, living in Ireland's capital, Dublin, and having recently started a new job. But under the surface Lisa has been battling a debilitating and life-threatening condition for the last twelve years, bulimia. This condition leaves no marks on her body, or makes her look a certain way, and so most of the time...

After the catastrophic disaster at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station in Ukraine in 1986, around 50,000 people were evacuated from the nearby city of Pripyat. The residents were told to take just the clothes they were wearing along with their passports, and reassured they would be allowed to return soon after. However as radiation levels were so high, the decision was made to create a 30km 'exclusion zone' around the Chernobyl power station and for the past 35 years the city of Pripyat...

BONUS MATERIAL On Easter Sunday in 1964, one of the strongest earthquakes in North American history struck Alaska with the city of Anchorage being horst hit. Amidst the destruction and despair, a voice emerged over the crackling airwaves that would go on to become one of the unlikely heroes of the disaster. Genie Chance was a local radio journalist who rushed to the station when the earthquake struck. For the next few days, she broadcast around the clock helping the dazed and confused l...

Stephen began to realize something wasn't right when noticed parts of his memory was missing. He would go for a walk with his girlfriend during the day and then realize he couldn't recall the last ten minutes - anything. He put it down to stress. But when it continued and became more frequent, added with severe headaches, he went to the doctor. After a brain scan, his doctor called him, "Stephen, you have a brain tumor."... This is the reality that is facing a friend of mine. Stephen and I w...

Imagine being paid to lie? Imagine having to live a lie for most of your professional career? If you forget your lies, or get them mixed up, you could be killed. This was the life that Marc Ruskin lived as a secret undercover FBI agent for almost 20 years. The FBI generally has about 100 UC agents working full-time in the field. In the 1990s and 2000s, Marc Ruskin had the most diverse, and notorious, case list of all, and the broadest experience within the bureaucracy, including overseas. He...

Paddy Slattery is an Irish filmmaker and director who has just been named by IFTA (Irish version of the Oscars) as one of Ireland's top emerging talents. But growing up, it was never his plan to pursue a career in cinema. He comes from a village in the countryside west of Dublin and in 1996 when he was just 17 years of age, Paddy was the passenger of a car that was involved in a serious accident, flying off a country road and flipping a number of times. The driver and other passengers walked ...

Mario Salerno is a landlord like no other. After first meeting him you may think this hard-talking, body-building, tracksuit-wearing, Italian American would be as tough as nails, but as hundreds of his tenants discovered when New York was in the grip of the Coronavirus, he has a heart of gold. In April of 2020 New Yorkers were devastated when their city became the global epicenter of the Covid-19 pandemic. The city that once never slumbered overnight became like a ghost town as people fled th...

Hannah Alderman is a young aspiring model who recently moved to New York City from Oklahoma. Moving to one of the most exciting cities in the world was a big step for Hannah towards her dream of becoming a professional model. However, when Covid-19 hit, she found herself locked into her apartment building in Brooklyn. It wasn't all bad as on her rooftop many of the building's tenants would meet in the evenings and throw parties. Hannah would go up to the roof every night and have a glass of w...