Michael Meade spent over 20 years on Wall Street and then stepped away from the pressured world of high finance to do something totally different. Some, in his circumstances, may have opted for plenty of time on the golf course and cracking open a few brews, that’s not the kind of person Michael Meade is.  

Intrigued by a visit to Ireland, Michael wanted to build a business that would connect to his Irish roots, work with a famous brewing dynasty, revive Ireland's oldest brewing brand and return beer making to Kilkenny,  the home of red ale.

It has, and will continue to be, a journey for a son of Buffalo, one of America's most Irish of towns. Michael's partnership with the Smithwick family, the revival of Sullivan's Brewing in Kilkenny, an award winning beer developed by brewmaster Ian Hamilton, is a tale of both passion and the value in building a great team, that combination just might yield Ireland's next great export company.

Michael Meade's Links

Sullivans Brewing Company

As Chief Executive of the Western Development Commission (WDC), Allan Mulrooney is a tireless advocate for the Western Region of Ireland, promoting social and economic development for the counties of Donegal, Leitrim, Sligo, Mayo, Roscommon, Galway, and Clare.

Why go west? Allan points to the region's mix of the old and the new, how it fosters a work-life balance,  the contrast of beautiful natural areas and vibrant cities, its expanding broadband internet and innovation-spurring connected hubs--and some of the best surfing in the world!

Growing up in Strandhill, just west of Sligo, Allan first paddled out into the surf before he was a teenager—the water was cold, but then the sport wasn’t cool. It sounds pretty cool when Allan tells of traveling the world with a few surfboards and a guitar on his back.

Talking to Allan, you see career threads spinning out in all directions—surf bum, web publisher, social enterprise entrepreneur, community advocate, business development executive, communications professional—and all those threads come together in his leadership role at the WDC, where he and his team work to tell the region’s compelling “Work Smarter, Live Better” story.

Join us as we head west with Allan for an audio tour of the scenic beauty, appealing lifestyle, expanding business ecosystem, dynamic innovation hubs, vibrant cities and peaceful towns, growing business opportunities, emerging career possibilities, growing economy, and all that’s best about the West.

But if surfing is your draw, Allan cautions it takes “more courage or madness” than he has to tackle the forty- and fifty-foot “mutant” waves off Mullaghmore Head!

Links:
Allan Mulrooney

Western Development Commission

Launching Season Six, we go behind the scenes of the woman-strong Irish film Lies We Tell, a brooding tale of angels and demons, light and shadow, manners and mores, family secrets and family crimes, which The Guardian called “a tightly laced, elegantly cut gothic period drama.”

A total rethinking of Irish writer Sheridan Le Fanu’s 1864 novel Uncle Silas, the film centers on Maud Ruthyn,brilliantly portrayed by the rising young star Agnes O’Casey, great-granddaughter of the playwright, Sean O'Casey, who is trapped in the sprawling family estate Knowl (filmed at Ardgillan Castle in County Dublin) and by “the law being made and enforced by men.”

The Guardian called her delivery “as sharp as a steak knife” and Screen International wrote, “A singular performance by Agnes O’Casey gives the pretty period piece a serrated edge.”

Our episode starts with a prelude fromMaedhbh Fiona Mc Cullagh, director of Washington, DC’s Solas Nua Capital Irish Film Festival, which kicks off on Feb. 29th with Lies We Tell.Then Director Lisa Mulcahy and screenwriter Elisabeth Gooch talk about how they transformed a century-and-a-half-old Gothic period drama into a compelling woman-centered story relevant to today. We learn why Elizabeth found the 1864 Maude so annoying and Lisa talks about the budget pressures that led to the film’s signature candle-lit ambiance, creating what Film Journal called “a tale of flawlessness and immersive beauty.”

Then you’ll meet Agnes O’Casey and hear about her UK upbringing, her Trinity College Dublin theatre training, her embrace of the Sean O’Casey lineage, her TV breakthrough in Ridley Road, her recent roles in films with the likes of Maggie Smith, Kathy Bates, Laura Linney, Stephen Rea, and a Cillian Murphy film yet to be released, and the challenges of being on camera in almost every scene ofLies We Tell.

Join us to meet the makers and learn the backstory of the brilliant, woman-forwards Lies We Tell.

Links:

Lies We Tell

Agnes O’Casey

Lisa Mulcahy

Elisabeth Gooch

Maedhbh Fiona Mc Cullagh 

Solas Nua Capital Irish Film Festival

When we last talked with Dan Mulhall, he was Ireland’s Ambassador to the United Stares. Since then, he retired after a 44-year career in diplomacy, but he’s been busier than ever as we learn in this check-in episode with Martin Nutty focused on his new book on W. B. Yeats.

Recent invitations to New York University, Cambridge, and Harvard, provided opportunities to engage with students and pursue research into Yeats, a poet that he’d turned to throughout his diplomatic career. Early on, Dan realized the power of Yeats’s poetry, how the words of one of Ireland’s most important cultural icons could open diplomatic doors that were closed to other nations.

Dan’s love of Yeats’s words and his understanding of the poet's role in Irish history is now told in “Pilgrim Soul: W. B. Yeats and the Ireland of His Time.”

Join us as Dan explores the many aspects of the enigmatic poet’s life and how his legacy continues to be relevant in a turbulent world.

Links

With a computer programming background and an instinct for reporting, Malachy Browne is on the vanguard of a new form of data-driven news coverage that is revitalizing journalism.

Co-founder and enterprise director of the New York Times Visual Investigations team, Malachy is pioneering the use of digital sleuthing, collecting and analyzing troves of video and audio, satellite images and other data, and creating 3-D reconstructions of crime scenes and geopolitical events to hold the powerful to account and deconstruct important news events.

These efforts have earned two Pulitzer Prizes, an Emmy, and other top-tier accolades for Malachy and his team.

Not bad for a Limerick lad from the village of Broadford, population 276!
He’d earn his master’s in international relations at the University of Limerick after getting his bachelor’s degree in engineering at University College Dublin.
Malachy tells of navigating between his core computer competency and his journalistic instincts (which he “blames” on his uncle, the legendary journalist Vincent Browne) which would lead him to Storyful, where he’d collaborate with past guests Mark Little, David Clinch, and others in creating the emerging innovative data-driven style of reporting.

Join us for an inside look at the way Malachy and his team are telling the world’s most critical stories—from the Arab Spring to the January 6th Insurrection—in an entirely new way.

 Malachy Browne Links

New York Times Links

Ted Smyth, former diplomat and C-Suite and current President of the Advisory Board of Glucksman Ireland House NYU,  joins Martin Nutty for a discussion on Irish and American politics.

What does the recent November 2023 American mid term election presage for 2024?

 How differing are the American and Irish views on Gaza? 

How should we understand the recent Dublin riots and the relationship between that violence and the competition for public resources?

These are some of the questions asked in Ted's 4th appearance on Irish Stew and he tells us how he thinks the upcoming election in 2024 are going to play out on both sides of the Atlantic

Ted Links:

Fin Dwyer of Irish History Podcasts pays a return visit to Irish Stew. We last hosted Fin two years ago.  Since then, Fin has continued to fascinate his listeners with in depth episodes on a broad range of Irish History topics.  Despite this frenetic pace, Fin has found time to publish a book titled:  A Lethal Legacy - A History of Ireland in 18 Murders.

We'll be talking about two cases detailed in the book and what they can tell us about how Ireland has changed over the past 200 years. We'll also find out what Fin has in store for his listeners in 2024

Links

Join us in a westward journey to the Irish enclaves of Butte, Montana and on to a chicken coop on Maryland’s Eastern Shore as Marybeth Shea guides us along little-known paths of Irish migration and through little understood profession of technical communications.

She describes herself as a humanist and cites her Catholic education, specifically with the Jesuits, as foundational to her worldview and her career.

She’s now a professor of English in the Professional Writing Program at the University of Maryland and a technical writer who draws on the Irish storytelling tradition to bridge the gap between scientific specialists and the rest of us.

It was Marybeth’s research for a technical writing project that took her into that chicken coop as part of her hands-on research to develop the storytelling needed to get buy-in from poultry farmers on ways to decrease their ammonia output.
 
It’s a wide-ranging conversation that adds to our understanding of the complexity of Irish immigration and the growing importance of effective technical communications.

Links

So why learn Irish?

"Studies have shown that learning your native language, learning any language, but especially your ancestral tongue, brings feelings of comfort and freedom. And especially when considering our past and our heritage, learning Irish is very revealing and very healing," says our latest guest Mollie Guidera, the Irish language teacher for Global Ireland.

She grew up “with Irish in her ears all the time” and gave her first Irish lesson at age seven to a visiting American cousin. And even though her Irish language school expelled her for uttering one sentence of English, her love for the language grew.
 
She’s taught over 6,000 students Irish online for a decade, currently through her engaging online global Irish language school simply named Irish with Mollie, a “blossoming community of worldwide Irish speakers, people from every background, every age, and just people who love Irish and are willing it forward.”

Add co-host John Lee to the student roster--he registered after finding Mollie on Instagram and TikTok. With about 150,000 social media followers, she’s a leading Irish language influencer, spreading awareness of Irish in refreshing new ways.

“We're hearing the echoes of our parents and grandparents and Irish writers in the Irish sounds and in the syntax and in the words themselves. It is such a tender and humorous language, replete with poetry and magic. It brings to life so many funny and quirky kinds of realizations and revelations.”

Join us for an episode of Irish language “realizations and revelations” with Múinteoir Mollie.

Links

Join us as we travel from Ireland all the way to New Zealand to explore a vision of Ireland from centuries ago in our conversation with Brian O’Sullivan.

He’s an author, cultural researcher, strategic analyst, and founder of Irish Imbas, the only Irish publisher specializing in fiction and non-fiction based on the ancient Irish cultural knowledge and belief patterns of authentic Irish mythology.

Hailing from West Cork, Brian lived in the UK and France before following his heart to New Zealand which he finds “a bit more like Ireland, more comfortable, like a comfortable shoe.” From this distant vantage point, he’s writing fiction that brings to life the Iron Age Ireland of Fionn mac Cumhaill, Liath Luachra, other legends from Ireland's deep past.

His Beara Trilogy, Fionn mac Cumhaill Series; and Irish Woman Warrior Series turn ancient Irish cultural concepts into page-turning tales of action, adventure, blood, passion, and conflict.

“You can't have a real sort of sense of where you are if you don't understand the context of how you got there in the first place. If you get your head around the history and the cultural belief systems, you’ll get a much better perspective on where you are and where you could go in the future,” he says.

For his Seamus Plug, Brian hopes you’ll try his popular Liath Luachra series and watch for his work-in-progress to teach what mythology is, what it isn't, and how it can be personally relevant.

Links:

A Trinity College graduate in economics and politics, he represented Irish business abroad, led The Ireland Funds for almost two decades, and now Kingsley Aikins combines his fervor for networking and diaspora engagement in the mission of The Networking Institute. 

“Kinger,” as he’s known to his friends, talks of how rugby became his global passport and the lucky break that landed him in Sydney, Australia to represent Enterprise Ireland and the Industrial Development Authority (IDA). Finding he “didn’t know a sinner” in the Southern Hemisphere, he started what has become one of the largest Irish business networking organizations in the world, and how that initiative helped him network his way into leading the groundbreaking diaspora initiative that became The Ireland Funds.

 Now his Networking Institute is helping people network their way to their full potential and nations from India to Nigeria to tap the power of their diasporas.

His “Seamus Plug” is a call to action for Ireland to position itself “as an absolute center of excellence for diaspora engagements, the epicenter for this subject around the world¸ the thought leader in this space.”

Join us for a warm, witty, quotable, and thought-provoking conversation with networking and diaspora thought leader, Kingsley Aikins. 

Links

Kingsley Aikins

The Networking institute

From New Jersey to Sligo, Wales, London, Germany, to touring the globe and then to New York, Roger Clark stamps his passport as a leading citizen of the Global Irish Nation.

And to millions around the world, he is an icon.

An actor, filmmaker, voiceover artist of over 150 audiobooks, Roger’s claim to global fame is his performance-capture portrayal of the cowboy antihero Arthur Morgan in the massively popular action-adventure video game, five years in the making, Red Dead Redemption 2, a.k.a. RDR2.

Roger takes us into the increasingly sophisticated world of gaming, why performance capture is so much more than just voiceover, the challenges of a 2,000-page script, and why he feels his RDR2 experience was more like being on stage than in a film, how video gaming now dwarfs the film industry, and the cult celebrity status he now enjoys as the alter-ego of Arthur Morgan.

“It's a real privilege to be able to have such a large, appreciative audience for something that you've done. I still pinch myself up and down both arms now and I'm very, very grateful,” Roger said.

But there’s a lot more to Roger Clark than one iconic role. His short filmHazardousis on YouTube, he’s in rehearsals for A Man for all Seasons in the role of Henry the Eighth, and on Mon., Oct. 30 he’ll headline New York’s Origin Theatre Gala as the winner of the George C. Heslin Artistic Leadership Award for his outstanding work in the theatre, film, and motion capture industries.

Wouldn’t Arthur Morgan be proud.

Links:

In this Global Irish conversation, we search for the true origins of Western Civilization with a most global of guests, Naoíse Mac Sweeney, author of The West: A New History in Fourteen Lives. 

Her father is from Cork City, her mother is Malaysian Chinese, she grew up in London, studied the Greek and Roman world, and is a professor of classical archaeology at the University of Vienna. And to make her even more global, her husband is from Malta, which we visited in our episode with Malta’s ambassador to Ireland,Giovanni Buttigeig.

She tells of how both Greek and Irish mythology pulled her into the ancient world, through the lure of the ancient Greek diaspora communities, her fascination with Troy, and her growing realization that “Western Civilization”—the concept of a single cultural inheritance extending from ancient Greece to modern times—is really a figment of our collective imagination.

In The West, our award-winning guest thoroughly debunks that figment through the stories of fourteen figures who each played a role in the creation of the Western idea—from Herodotus, a mixed-race migrant, to Phylis Wheatley, an enslaved African American who became a literary sensation. From these narratives, a more nuanced, expansive, and intriguing view of the West emerges.

Naoíse wraps up Irish Stew with the most unexpected “Seamus Plug” to date, which got your co-hosts thinking of approaching Dunnes Stores for sponsorship.

And we’ll happily endorse her comment early in the conversation, when she said, “part of the joy of following Irish Stew is to hear the origin stories of so many people in the diaspora.”

Links:

Growing up in The Troubles in Northern Ireland, Jane Ferguson spent most of her life reporting on the global troubles in Yemen, Somalia, Sudan, Iraq, Gaza, Syria, and Afghanistan, reporting for CNN International, Al Jazeera, PBS Newshour, The New Yorker and other outlets, always finding the human stories in inhuman wars and all revealed in her unflinching new memoir No Ordinary Assignment.

The least surprising part of her memoir is when she wins the George Polk Award, an Emmy Award, and an Alfred I. DuPont-Columbia Award for her stellar reporting.

Jane takes us back to her young “hillbilly” childhood in County Armagh, growing up in a rural Protestant farming family, where security checkpoints along the roads and military helicopters in the skies was for her, normalcy.

She escaped this normalcy through the pages of National Geographic, running her fingers over its maps, and the inspiration on women war correspondents she saw reporting from the front lines.

Jane’s is a life lived through culture shocks, from a rustic Irish farm to a bucolic New Jersey prep school, from the ancient civilization of Yemen to the futuristic world of Dubai, from finding her tribe among the war correspondents at Kabul’s colorful Gandamack Lodge, to staying with her tribe to the bitter end in the fall of that city years later.

With fear as her ally, she wills herself into some of the most dangerous places on earth, balancing her sense of service with her ambition, looking at each conflict through non-sectarian eyes, feeling privileged to tell the human stories amid geopolitical turmoil.

She is largely off the road now, teaching at Princeton University while continuing as a PBS NewsHour - Special Correspondent and contributor for The New Yorker.

On Thursday, Sept. 21, 2023 at 7:00 pm, The National Humanities Center will host “An Evening with Jane Ferguson,” at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

So much of Jane’s “beat” spun out of the tragedy of 9/11, so it was particularly meaningful that we recorded our episode with her on the anniversary of that somber day.

Links

Seamus Plug

Social Media 

Our Global Irish conversation with award-winning author Jane Delury centers on her second novel Hedge, a bildungsroman of an Irish American woman in her forties named Maude pursuing a career in the esoteric field of garden history, looking for clues in the past under the mounting challenges of the present.

The theme of bringing a garden back to life threads through this novel of marital strains, infidelity, family secrets, personal discovery, endurance, and perseverance. Along the way, Jane leaves hints of her Irish roots, with mentions of porter cake, St. Patrick’s Day, the Clancy Brothers, and Maude’s family home in a neighborhood known as “Little Ireland.” 

Jane tells Irish Stew of her family roots in Cork, Mayo, and Sligo, her trips to Ireland, and her pride in her Irish citizenship.

We discuss the symbolism of the garden, her literary influences, her love of short stories (she has one coming out soon in the Georgia Review), her first novel The Balcony and her experience publishing with the innovative Zibby Books.

And she drops a few intriguing hints about what’s coming next, mentioning a “thing” she’s working on that she realizes is evolving into a novel and how she’s writing something new about her Irish Catholic upbringing.

Her Seamus Plug is a call to support the exceptional work of Strength to Love II, a community-based program on a 1.5-acre Baltimore farm offering workforce development and employment to community residents and citizens returning from incarceration.

So, join our compelling conversation with novelist Jane Delury, read Hedge, and stay tuned for what Jane has coming next!

Links

Join us on a stroll along North Circular Road from Phoenix Park to the Dublin
Docklands with our guide Luke McManus, the documentary filmmaker of the
award-winning North Circular which opens in New York City on July 28th.

Rendered in graphic black & white over a soundtrack of local North Circular
musicians, the film gives voice to narratives from the history of the city and
nation, from colonialism to mental health, from women’s liberation to the
battle to save the legendary folk revival venue the Cobblestone Pub from the
wrecking ball.

Growing up in Bray, the home of Ardmore Studios, Luke recounts that first
moment he realized that he was a director, why Humphrey Bogart holds such
a lofty position in his pantheon of film greats, and the many ways to make a
living in film.

Co-host John Lee diverts him into a conversation about horse racing which
Luke explored in his film about the legendary ‘chaser Arkle and his TV series
on the women in the sport, Jump Girls. Martin Nutty gets Luke talking about
Crainn na hÉireann (The Trees of Ireland), the documentary series he did
with past guest   Manchán Magan .

But the centerpiece of the episode is North Circular, where Luke celebrates
the beauty in urban grit, the serendipity found along the street, the
juxtaposition of squatters and the shadows of skyscraping construction
cranes, and the expressive power of music to honor the tragic and celebrate
the spirit, all ending on an exuberant high note provided by Irish women in
music and sport.

Step off with us on our trek through North Circular with Luke McManus

Links
Websites

Luke's Social Media

How can a kneecap bone change the history of Ireland?

We answer that question during our conversation with Dr. Ruth Carden, a paleo zoologist with a particular interest in the animals that roamed Ireland over the last 50,000 years.

Ruth's research focuses particularly on the skeletal remains of those animals, since that is all that usually remains after the passage of time. Find out what Ruth can learn from a single bone and how adavanced laboratory analysis can yield  multiple clues on the nature of the animals that she researchs.

We discuss how a single knee bone or patella, found by Ruth, in a poorly labeled collection, has changed the date of the earliest continuous human habitation in Ireland. Before that discovery, it was thought the earliest modern human settlers of Ireland dated to 7,900 BCE. Ruth's work has pushed that date back to soemwhere between 10,860 and 10,641 BCE.

In addition to deep prehistoric research, Ruth is also coordinating the Viking Dublin Dogs project, a grassroots effort which seeks to understand the nature of dogs in Ireland over a thousand years ago and how they interacted with their humans. The project is supported by a number of Irish schools which are supporting and learning about this kind of scientific research.

Cohosts John Lee and Martin have decided to support Ruth's Viking Dublin Dog project and hope we can encourage our listeners to sponsor research on a single dog. We have decided to name our dog Seamus Plugson, although in truth we don't know if this Seamus is a male or a female. Through the money gathered, Ruth will be able to determine the gender of the dog and more importantly provide a date indicating exactly when that dog lived

If you want to help support our fundraiser you can find the Irish Stew Viking Dublin Dog at this link => https://gofund.me/d346d5c3

Both Ruth and your Irish Stew cohosts will be thankful for your support as we attempt to put some flesh back on Seamus Plugson's bones

Ruth's Links

Websites:

Social Media:

Our latest global Irish conversation goes behind the scenes of the globe’s most significant international organization, the United Nations, courtesy of Ireland’s Ambassador to the UN, Fergal Mythen.

He didn’t rise to one of Ireland’s most significant diplomatic postings without an impressive diplomatic career behind him.

Fergal has worked on Irish-Canadian, Irish-Latin American, Irish-Caribbean, and Irish-British Affairs, including Brexit. He was on the European Community monitoring mission to the former Yugoslavia, and joined the representation of Ireland to the European Union in Brussels.

We discuss his growing up in an Ireland on the cusp of change, what the opening of free second level education meant to him, the lessons he learned at the embassy in Rome about looking after people in real need, the challenges of the peripatetic diplomatic life, and his takeaways from six months representing Ireland on the UN Security Council. 

He has a clear-eyed view of the UN, saying, “it's imperfect, but it can try its best to prevent hell on earth.”

He’s enjoying New York’s vitality and its surprisingly warm welcome, getting to know the Irish-American community, and weekends spent getting his children out to play Gaelic sports.

Speaking of sport, his “Seamus Plug” is a call to action to ensure a pathway for young girls and women to stay actively involved in sport and to raise awareness of the UN’s sustainable development goals.

Our conversation opened with a quote from John F. Kennedy which the Ambassador feels is spot on: “Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate.”

Links

When Seamus Heaney wrote, “Walk on air, against your better judgement,”  he could have been writing about Pauline Turley.

From Newry to New York, Pauline has paired hard work with serendipity to arrive at her pivotal role charting the impressive trajectory on New York’s Irish Arts Center from a cramped tenement building to its expansive new home.

She tells of how winning the Green Card lottery led this Trinity College Drama and Theatre Studies grad to depart for New York on something of a lark, of hustling her way into work in bars and restaurants, and of picking up the telephone book to discover the Irish Arts Center, where two weeks after starting work she’d find herself in charge of the whole thing as its executive director.

And the IAC would be her professional and spiritual home for the next 26 years and counting, first as its executive director and for the past 16 years its vice chair with Aidan Connolly bringing his government and non-profit management chops to the executive director role.

Imagine the patience, ingenuity, energy, collaboration, and cajoling that went into conceiving and then realizing the dream for a new home for Irish arts in New York. And as opening day approached, Pauline had another major project in gestation, her daughter Lily who conveniently held off her arrival until after Pauline had wrapped up the year’s IAC Gala.

The migration from its old home has opened new possibilities for Irish arts in New York, with bigger venues for music and dance, spaces for visual arts, and new ways to play a growing role in the multicultural vitality of the city. IAC is a place where you could find the punk rock musical Good Vibrations from Belfast’s Lyric Theatre on the main stage, while in a studio space around the corner a decidedly non-punk crowd is having good craic with traditional Irish set dancing.

From The Troubles in Northern Ireland to the triumph of the Irish Arts Center in New York—join us in our conversation with the “Muse of Irish Arts in New York,” here on Irish Stew.

For Tickets to “Good Vibrations: A Punk Rock Musical” (June 14-July 16, 2023) go to: https://irishartscenter.org/event/good-vibrations-a-punk-rock-musical

Links
Pauline Turley

Irish Arts Center

Join us as we pick up the conversation with Doug Devaney who interviewed us last fall on The Plastic Podcasts.

A talented podcaster, Doug’s also an actor, writer, journalist, and self-proclaimed "songster, funster, punster, hamster." In this episode we delve into the core concept of The Plastic Podcasts, which centers around the notion that “we all come from somewhere else.”

Doug explores Irish diaspora narratives in England by engaging in lively discussions with actors, activists, artists, writers, academics, builders, and singers, while offering a platform to often overlooked people, including those with both African and Irish roots, as well as members of the Traveler community.

We explore why Doug believes that discussing Irishness necessitates addressing Britishness, how Irish Americans differ from the Irish in England, and why they use terms like London Irish or Birmingham Irish instead of Irish English or Irish British.

We delve into Doug's deep connection to his Irish identity despite growing up in England with an English mother, his County Clare roots, the instinctual bond among Irish people in England, the downplaying of Irish heritage in England during the 70s and 80s, his shift away from pursuing a career as a TV-inspired “verbose crime-busting lawyer” his ventures into playwriting, his commitment to preserving the stories of the Irish diaspora, and the backstories of his highly personal one-man plays.

Doug's talent for captivating storytelling, inventive writing, free-spirited performance, engaging conversational style, and mastery of the comic aside, make him a savory new ingredient for our Irish Stew.

But we never did find out about the hamster thing.

Links

The Plastic Podcasts

Doug’s Social Media

For Dublin’s own David Clinch, media is serious business. He’s been working on the front lines of innovative journalism and the complete overhaul of the news business for the past 30 years.

He jokes that he’s been called “the Zelig of the media,” an “accidental journalist” popping up in key roles at the companies driving the changing media landscape, including ITN News in London, CNN where he helped manage the CNN International Desk in Atlanta and pioneered the use of social media for international newsgathering, a direction he pursued to help our previous Irish Stew guest Mark Littlebuild Storyful, the social media news agency at the intersection of media and technology.

Currently, David concentrates on the core elements that enable journalism to thrive, particularly the financial underpinnings that sustain modern news media. He serves as the VP of Partnerships at Mather Economics, assisting companies in formulating sustainable business strategies and curating the influential “Mather Report. As the founder and consultant for Media Growth Partners he’s helping keep small news organizations viable, while developing a framework for capturing the value of local news reporting.”

Born in England to Irish parents, David stayed there just long enough to develop an English accent that was “beaten out of me” he jokes when the family moved to Dublin. He studied at Belvedere College and Trinity College Dublin, saying “it was your fate if you were a Clinch in Dublin at that time.”

David shares how Bono opened up his world view, his start in media with a pirate radio station, why he was told he’d never work for RTE, how he found his way into television, his move to Atlanta to work for the emerging global news powerhouse CNN, the growth of digital forensic journalism, why he’s so concerned with establishing the value of local media, and his open invitation to anyone in media to show them the framework he’s building to build local media through what he calls “organized laziness.”

Join us for “a short history of the future of news,” with media innovator, David Clinch.

Links

Websites 

Social Media

For Richard Donavan running the grueling 26.2 miles of the Boston Marathon was only a way to stretch his legs before getting up the next morning to run across America…for the second time. Running seven marathons on seven continents in seven days sounds impossible, so he did it in under five.

Richard is also the first person to run marathons at both the North and South Poles and now lures other likeminded athletes to join him in some of Earth’s most extreme endurance races, including the North Pole Marathon, Antarctic Ice Marathon, Volcano Marathon, and World Marathon Challenge (7 Marathons 7 Continents in a leisurely 7 Days).

Where to next? Space. His Space Athletics Federation is hoping to stage a race in space by early 2026.

Quite a journey for an economist from Mervue, County Galway.

On Irish Stew he tells of the trauma that led to his embrace of ultra long-distance running, improvising his way to becoming the first person to run a marathon at the North Pole, the friend who motivated his two cross U.S. runs, dodging coyotes while running across the American West, overcoming the mental and physical challenges of running in some of the world's harshest environments, and his push into the final frontier of extreme sports in space.

Join us in a conversation that spans the continents and looks to the stars with our guide to the exquisite loneliness of the long-distance runner, Richard Donovan.

Links

Websites

o  World Marathon Challenge

o   Ice Marathon

o   Space Athletics Federation 

Social Media 

o  Twitter - Richard Donovan

o   Twitter: Space Athletics Federation

o   LinkedIn

o  Facebook - Antarctic Ice Marathon

Seamus Plug

o   Triumph Foundation

For over 25 years Manachán Magan has been at the forefront of Irish cultural affairs. He first rose to public attention with the 1996 launch of Irish language television now known as TG4. Together with his brother Ruán, Manachán produced a ground breaking series of television programs exploring indigenous cultures across the globe

Since those early days, Manachán continues to drive the cultural conversation through multiple mediums. He has proved to be an accomplished journalist, theatrical performer, podcaster and author. The recent publication of 32 Words For Field and Listen To The Land Speak is redefining how Irish people interact with their ancient language and culture

Join us as we explore Manachán’s deep rooted Irishness and how he has carved out a space in public consciousness that differs from his extraordinary family. How he chooses to live a life unbounded by modern day conventions through the exploration of his unique perspective 

Manachán Links

From “The Island of Malta and the Ireland of Malta,” Malta’s Ambassador to Ireland tells Irish Stew of the unexpected connections between the island nations of Ireland and Malta, especially for his hometown of Floriana.

Ambassador Giovanni Buttigieg traces the Irish connection back to an 1895 visit to Floriana by an Irish Cardinal who went to Rome to advocate for the sainthood of one of their own, and a 1905 football match when the Royal Dublin Fusiliers gave the Floriana side their green and white striped jerseys, colors the Floriana Irish, as they are still known, wear to this day.

The ambassador relates how football helped renew the Irish connections when Malta “turned green” as thousands of Irish fans set up base camp for flights to Sicily for the 1990 World Cup matches there. The Irish have been coming back ever since as tourists who fill Malta-bound planes to capacity.

He tells of his time as Consul for Malta in New York and as Deputy Permanent Representative of Malta to the United Nations, how reading an Irish poem a day prepared him for his dream posting to Dublin, presenting his diplomatic credentials to President Michael D. Higgins, Ireland and Malta’s shared legacy of British colonial rule, whether he is related to that other Buttigieg…and why he likes Irish weather.

Ambassador Giovanni Buttigieg— “Maltese by birth, Irish by the grace of God.”

Links

A Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist, Barbara Walsh started her career in Galway as a newspaper photographer and has gone on to work for newspapers and magazines in Florida, Massachusetts, Maine, and New Hampshire.  

While at the Lawrence Eagle-Tribune, Barbara reported on the notorious murderer William Horton Jr. and Massachusetts’ flawed prison furlough system, a series that played a crucial role in the U.S. Presidential election where George H. W. Bush defeated Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis, changed Massachusetts sentencing laws, and won a Pulitzer Prize for General News Reporting in 1988.

“The Horton story also taught me that journalists have tremendous power and responsibility to inform, to tell stories that need to be told,” she said.

A raft of other journalism awards would follow, as would several children’s books, one illustrated by renowned artist Jamie Wyeth.

But she faced the most challenging story of her life when she asked her father about his childhood pain. The process led to heartrending odysseys: one into a deadly Newfoundland hurricane and the lives of schooner fishermen, mostly of Irish descent, who relied on God and the wind to carry them home; the other, into a squall stirred by a man with many secrets, a grandfather who remained a mystery until long after his death, all captured in her book August Gale.

We talk about how as a child she preferred writing over talking, how she rebounded from failing her final college journalism paper, her dread of deadlines, the state of journalism today, the Irish experience in Newfoundland, her connection to her Irish heritage, her travels to Ireland, and the two “guardian angels” she met on the ferry to Belfast who diverted her from a perilous path.

Links:

·Website:  https://barbarawalsh.net

·Twitter:https://twitter.com/BarbWalshAuthor

· Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/barbarawalsh.author

· Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/barbaraawalsh

·Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Barbara-Walsh/author/B005TL1RRA

· August Gale: A Father and Daughter's Journey into the Storm on indiebound.org:https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780762761463

He’s the quintessential New York Irish cop who rose up through the ranks from walking a beat to becoming a highly-ranked detective. He’s also a respected leader of New York’s Irish American community and a man at the center of a major controversy playing out now in New York as the American Irish Historical Society’s irreplaceable Beaux-Arts townhouse home on Fifth Avenue in New York City was put up for sale.

Brian always seems to be in the middle of it all, from his roots amidst a big Irish family, as a cop keeping the peace as a detective during some grim times in New York, in the middle of important peace-building efforts in Northern Ireland, and now in the middle of efforts to save the AIHS.

Brian came into the AIHS as Chairman of the Executive Council, hoping to air out the old building, welcome Irish arts and culture, and return the 125-year-old organization to relevance. And the work was well underway when his situation there became untenable.

The situation soon became vastly more dire as the AIHS announced its plans to sell its landmark building and move its collection to who knows where.

Join us as Brian talks of his Irish American childhood, his adventures scurrying across rooftops in pursuit of “perps,” how he got to know the people in the neighborhoods he served, and the effort to save the AIHS, and the breakthrough when New York attorney general Leticia James blocked the building’s sale.
All that and a bit of “paddywackery” too.

Links for Brian McCabe

American Irish Historical Society Articles

Growing up with one foot in Dublin and the other in Cork, Michael “Mick” Mellamphy now has a foot in Ireland and one in New York, where he’s in starring in Ronán Noone’s The Smuggler at the Irish Repertory Theatre, part of the Origin Theatre’s 1st Irish Festival he curated, on stages around NYC for Jan. & Feb. 2023.

And he still made time to sit down with us a couple of hours before The Smuggler’s final dress rehearsal before opening night a few hours later.

But as well known as Mick is in the New York theater scene, but for avid gamers he’s famed as the performance capture artist of the cheeky Irish gunslinger Sean MacGuire from Rockstar’s hugely popular video game Red Dead Redemption 2.

It all started when his grandmother took him to the Cork Opera House to see a Christmas “panto” – the traditional holiday season performance of songs, gags, comedy and dancing – and told him “you could be up there, doing that for a living.”

Mick shares tales from the Irish stage, his early days in New York, his time bartending at and later owning the popular New York pub Ryan’s Daughter, his first forays into New York theater, why he likens his video game work to performing on the stage, while sliping into an impressive array of accents along the way.

Join us for an engaging conversation with a Global Irish Citizen of stage, screen, and video games, Michael Mellamphy!

Links

Veteran diplomat and C Suite executive, Ted Smyth, joins Martin Nutty, on The Stew for the third time. With the conclusion of the final election of the US Midterm election season, it seemed like a good time to take the political temperature of not just the United States, but also of Northern Ireland and the Western European democracies.

Ted is a member of the Irish Americans for Biden committee and has a thoughtful take and matters political which spans both sides of the Atlantic. Join Ted and Martin as they chew the fat on what just happened and what to expect in 2023

Speechwriter, novelist, essayist, and now memoirist Peter Quinn returns to Irish Stew to share tales from his home borough of New York City and beyond, captured in his new book, Cross Bronx: A Writing Life.

Join us as Peter spins stories from his rise up through Irish American middle-class respectability in New York’s northernmost borough, The Bronx, which Quinn describes as “a small-scale Yugoslavia. Ethnic enclaves were interspersed amid areas in which, though physically mingled; groups lived psychically apart. We thought of ourselves in terms of neighborhoods and parishes.”

Quinn charts his shift from collaborative but anonymous work as a speechwriter at the highest echelons of political and corporate America, to his solitary, but no longer anonymous work writing Banished Children of Eve, Hour of the Cat, and other novels, and finally to the inward-looking, self-reflecting, warts-and-all odyssey of writing his memoir…a gift to his family and to us.

We drive along Peter Quinn’s personal Cross Bronx Expressway, though the twists and turns of his Irish American life, his family dynamics, his pull towards history, his dedication to the written word, his perceptions of the Irish in America, a few salty anecdotes on New York notables, and though it all, his on-again, off-again, ultimately eternally “on” love story with “The Girl from Hot Dog Beach.”

Cross Bronx: A Writing Life is available at Fordham University Press and all major booksellers, including Amazon.

In a way we’ve been teasing this episode since our first, as we’ve treated you to a wee taste of Rosa Nutty’s music at the opening of every Irish Stew episode. Now we go beyond the snippet and follow Rosa through the emotional landscape she travels in song.

Her first album after a five-year absence from the recording studio, World So Blue is getting rave reviews, like this from The Irish Times:

“Now she’s back with a long-in-gestation debut album that weaves a kind of spell that will calm the jittery nerves of this weekend’s ghosts and spirits… this sense of optimism in the face of impending gloom seals whatever abrasions may have resided in Nutty’s creative mindset over the past three years.”

Join us as Rosa tells of her bilingual Irish-English childhood, her immersion in the visual arts, the influences on her songwriting, the power of letting go, her “semi-live” recording style, and the exhilaration of live performance.

And as she traces her journey from rural North County Dublin to rural Cavan, we’ll also hear all-too-brief segments from several of her songs.

Despite what she jokingly calls her “sad girl music,” there’s optimism in her atmospheric songs, best expressed in the title song “World Still Blue,” a hopeful sense that despite the turmoil and hardships of this world, from another perspective, say the perspective of an astronaut looking back on to earth from space, our world can still be “blue, calm and full of potential.”

Links

·       Linktree:https://linktr.ee/rosanutty

·       Website:http://www.rosanutty.com/

·       Twitter:https://twitter.com/RosaNutty

·       Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/rosanutty/

·       Bandcamp:https://rosanutty.bandcamp.com/album/world-still-blue

·       Merchandise:https://rosanutty.bandcamp.com/merch

Gregory Harrington has stayed busy since our initial episode back in February 2022. Since that  conversation, the accomplished violinist  released a recording titled Gregory Harrington: Live From The Irish Repertory

Join Martin Nutty as he chats with Gregory about the risks of recording beloved traditional  Irish tunes as a classically trained violinist. Learn how Gregory approaches the recording of music outside classical repertoire and how he approaches the challenge of bringing something fresh to each musical crossover recording. 

Gregory Harrington Links

Gregory Harrington Live From The Irish Repertory 

In times past, the Irish language (Gaelic) was thought by some to be a mark of backwardness. In this episode, husband and wife team, Colm Bairéad and Cleona Ní Chrualaoi reveal how Ireland's native tongue provided entrée to the world of movie-making leading ultimately to the creation of An Cailín Ciúin (The Quiet Girl), Ireland's nominee for the Best International Feature Film Oscar.

While there are a number of hurdles to jump before the final five Oscar nominees are announced, there is little doubt that An Cailín Ciúin is meeting with approval from both general audiences and film critics, racking numerous awards at film festivals around the globe beginning with a Grand Prix award at the Berlin Film Festival in February

We talk with Cleona and Colm about how the Irish language shaped their lives, sometimes in not the most comfortable of ways. We track their paths through Irish Radio and TG4 (Ireland's Irish Language TV Channel) where they met and how they resolved to make a feature-length fiction film using their Inscéalproduction company.

Join us as we go behind the scenes in the making of An Cailín Ciúin and how things seemed to pull together in a special way despite significant challenges

Colm & Cleona Links

An Cailín Ciúin Links

Our 50th episode comes to you on the most ancient of Irish holidays - Halloween or Oíche Shamhna (eee-ha how-na) in Irish/Gaelic. It is the night that celebrates the transition from the old to the new Celtic year. That transition point, between the present and the past, was a space where the Celts believed the spirits or pucaí (pook-ee) of the past roamed.

Halloween seems a particularly appropriate date for us to introduce Neil Jackman, a man with an insatiable interest in Ireland's mysterious past and whose mission is to make "the past present". We talk with Neil about his work on the foreboding hill which overlooks Dublin where a sinister brooding building stares down on the capital city and where 18th-century aristocratic members of the Hell Fire met for their debauched revelries.

While we talk with Neil about the Hell Fire and its far deeper past, we also explore his background from the North West of England and how he came to live in Ireland with a hazy understanding of his ancestral past. We trace his career through an archaeological boom and bust period which in turn led to the foundation, along with his wife Róisín Burke, of the innovative Abarta Heritage. Abarta has worked with multiple stakeholders of Ireland's past including the Office of Public Works, the Heritage Council, and the National Museum of Ireland. Always, Abarta has been focused on deepening the public's understanding of the island's rich historical legacy.

Not to be just historical, we will talk with Neil about his Puffin obsession and the otherworldly site where his twin interests collide. You'll just have to listen to the podcast for more.

Neil Jackman Links

Our 49th episode features one of our most global of guests–Deirdre Ryan, a world class athlete who competed for Ireland on the global stage and who is now raising the bar for Irish food.

Born in County Dublin, Deirdre studied business and Italian, then worked, studied and trained in Milan. To train and work in Germany, she learned to speak German and she’d go on to work in Belgium, Switzerland, and the UK before returning to Ireland full time.

Along the way, she soared to new heights rolling backwards over the high jump bar, ever higher, culminating in a sixth-place finish in the 2011 world championships (later moved up to fifth when a Russian athlete was banned) and set the Irish record when qualifying for the 2012 Olympics in London, competing there despite training setbacks from injuries.

As she trained, she developed an interest in food, nutrition and sustainability, making her a natural fit for Bord Bia, the Irish Food Board, where she is helping the Irish agriculture and food sector “clear the bar” to a greener future as the Director of Sustainability & Quality Assurance for Bord Bia’s Origin Green initiative.

Join us for a story of sustained excellence in business and athletics, and of sustainability in the Irish food sector in our “Global Irish Nation Conversation” with Deirdre Ryan.

Links

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/deirdreryanireland

Bord Bia:

Origin Green:

From a dairy farm in County Offaly to the C-Suite in a global branding agency, her university days in Ulster during The Troubles, her internship with Enterprise Ireland that brought her to New York, her work bringing foreign direct investment and thousands of jobs to Ireland, her MBA from Harvard Business School, her rise in the world of marketers where she is regularly named one of the profession’s most influential global voices, her launch of a #GlobalIrish movement built on the hashtag #WearingIrish that helped jumpstart the world of Irish fashion and design while further burnishing the Irish brand…Margaret Molloy may not have done it all–but she’s getting close.

We learn of the strategy, serendipity, and simplicity that shaped her career, her role as the global chief marketing officer of the leading branding agency Siegel+Gale, the meaning of “brand,” how the best brands are rooted in simplicity, the power of a personal brand, the importance of a diversity of personal brands, and Tourism Ireland as an exemplar of #BrandIreland.

A confirmed New Yorker now, Margaret keeps strong ties to Ireland, has mentored many aspiring Irish professionals in New York, brings a vibrant Irish voice to the American c-suite and to podcasting through her How CMOs Commit, and still is guided by the lessons learned back on the farm.

Join us for a most #GlobalIrishNation conversation with one of its most compelling citizens, Margaret Molloy.

Margaret Links

Wearing Irish Links

It wasn’t planned this way, but we recorded our episode with writer Brian McDonald on Sept. 11, a date that looms large in his new book Five Flights Up, which traces the Irish American story of four generations of the Feehan family in the Fire Department of New York, the FDNY, a story which would tragically culminate with the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center.

From the days just after the horse-drawn firetruck, to the devastation of the 1970s when the Bronx was burning, to the unspeakable tragedy of 9/11, to the culture-busting department of today, a Feehan has worn the shoulder patch of the FDNY. The tale shines the spotlight on the career of William M. Feehan, the only person to have held every rank in the FDNY including Fire Commissioner, who died in action at “Ground Zero” in the 9/11 attack. 

Born in the Bronx and raised in the Irish enclave of Pearl River, NY, Brian shares stories of his Irish roots, his police officer father who was the focus of an earlier book My Father’s Gun, and colorful tales from his years serving drinks to the denizens of Elaine’s, New York’s unlikely literary and celebrity hangout, captured in the pages of his Last Call at Elaine's.

A Fordham University and Columbia School of Journalism graduate, McDonald contributes to such publications as The New York Times, teaches writing and journalism, has authored multiple books, and co-wrote with Malachy McCourt Death Need Not Be Fatal.

Join us as we see the Irish experience in New York, the social history of the city, and the human stories of 9/11 through the eyes of the Feehans of the FDNY.

Brian McDonald Links:

Flor MacCarthy was born in West Cork and shares memories of one of Ireland's most idyllic regions. Her childhood was one rich in the indulgence of curiosity, filled with books, history, and fueled by a Russophile father.

A Trinity College degree in French and Art History led unexpectedly to a career in journalism. Flor worked for 16 years at RTE, Ireland's national broadcaster, reporting on both domestic and international news.

Following her successful career at RTE, Flor took up the position of Politics Presenter at Oireachtas TV which afforded the opportunity to continue her journalistic career while providing enough space to pursue literary ambitions. The President's Letters, An Unexpected History, released in 2021 has proven to be a highly successful product of her expanded brief.

Join Flor and hosts, John Lee and Martin Nutty, as they discuss the surprising, amusing, and,  sometimes infuriating correspondence lurking in the archives of the Irish Presidency.

Flor's Links

Growing up in a Dublin home with no TV, Aedín turned to books, reading them aloud, drawing out the characters, and letting the words wash over her, which is how at age ten she managed to read James Joyce’s intimidating novel Ulysses. 

She was drawn to the rhythms and music in the words of the great writers, no surprise coming from a home with her avid reader mother and her father, Paddy Moloney of The Chieftains.

But she’d feel the lure of the stage and after early acting experiences in Dublin she ventured to London and found success, ironically, considering her upbringing, on television. But New York beckoned, where Aedín has acted in a string of Off Broadway plays often at the famed Irish Repertory Theatre. She has also worked to amplify the voices of women on the stage through the Fallen Angel Theatre Company she founded, focused on Irish and British plays by and about women, which she often performed, directed, or produced.

We talked to Aedín as she was concluding her successful Irish Rep run of Yes! Reflections of Molly Bloom,which she and Colum McCann adapted from the closing section of Ulysses, directed by John Keating, with music by Paddy Moloney. It’s a one-woman show where Aiden never leaves the stage for 90 minutes, electrifying for the audience, exhausting for Aedín.

But not so exhausting that she doesn’t want to stop channeling the spirit of Molly Bloom as she and Colum are working to take the show on tour to Ireland and the UK.

And for the second time, Aedín gifts Irish Stew with a passage from Yes!,so be sure to stay to the end when she brings Molly to vibrant life performing the “Mulvey’s Letter” section of Molly Bloom’s Soliloquy.

Links:

Our conversation with the warm and welcoming Elaine Ní Bhraonáin takes us from her childhood in South County, Dublin, to New York’s lively Irish scene, to bucolic Ballymoney on the north Wexford coast where she and her husband raise their three healthy children after three difficult pregnancies.

She talks about being raised in a home where the paternal language was Irish and the maternal tongue was English, growing up as an Irish language “geek” who would earn B.A. and M.A. degrees in Irish language.  

Her urge to “break out of the bubble” landed her in New York, where she dove headlong into the city’s thriving Irish scene and taught Irish at the Irish Arts Center. She studied the Irish of New York and tracked the “boundary markers” they used to express their identity, leading to her PhD thesis on Irish identity in the U.S. 

Though she still identifies herself as an “Irish New Yorker,” she knew when it was time to return to Ireland. Settling in Ballymoney, she and her husband Dean set about raising a family, but it was not to be easy. Elaine shares the challenges of three difficult pregnancies, especially the premature birth of their second child Odhrán, the medical battles he faced but against all odds triumphed. Elaine now aids other mothers and families facing similar battles through her advocacy for the Irish Neonatal Health Alliance.

While she is raising her three sons, she is teaching Irish in Dublin for Notre Dame University and is working on turning her scholarly PhD on Irish identity in the U.S. into a book more accessible to the public.

When she does, we hope she’ll join us again on Irish Stew.

Links

We’re not sure what’s more impressive—that Larry Kirwan originated and co-wrote the Broadway hit Paradise Square, or that his early band with Pierce Turner was banned from the notorious New York punk rock club CBGB for being “too demonic.”

Larry talks of how his unusual childhood in Wexford and his need to maneuver through different points of view--Republican vs Free State, Catholicism vs Atheism, Irish vs British—laid the foundation of an artistic vision that could see the world through the prism of others.

A quest for adventure brings Larry to the U.S. where he dives into the underbelly of New York, Manhattan’s Lower East Side, a hard-edged, multi-cultural neighborhood where somehow he thrived. And though he didn’t know it at the time, Larry had already started doing his field research for the play that became Paradise Square.

But before Broadway, there was Black 47, the band he formed with Chris Byrne in 1989 that would tour the country, guest star on top TV shows, and record music for 25 years. Larry shares the origin of the band’s name, his approach to songwriting, how the music came together on stage, and tales from the rock and roll road.

But while he was writing music, he was writing columns, essays, memoirs, novels, and plays. One of those plays was Hard Times, set in New York’s ultimate interracial melting pot, the downtown neighborhood Five Points in the run-up to the disastrous Civil War Draft Riots. A Broadway producer who saw it at the intimate Cell Theater brought it to Broadway where it is now running on a grand scale as Paradise Square.

We wrap up with a look into his latest novel, Rockaway Blue, set in the aftermath of 9/11 in a world of Irish American cops and firefighters on the fringes of NYC.

This fall Larry will receive the Eugene O’Neill Lifetime Achievement Award from the Irish American Writers & Artists. It’s always a hell of a party, so we hope to see you there!
 
Links

Our Bloomsday episode with the engaging James Joyce scholar John McCourt takes us to Italy for the first time, specifically its outpost across the Adriatic Sea, Trieste. 

“There, I can safely say I discovered James Joyce,” McCourt says of Trieste. “Having    encountered him occasionally in Ireland, I found myself in the city that had been his home for ten years.” 

After earning his BA, MA, and PhD. from University College Dublin, McCourt launched an international academic career, focused mainly in Italy–at the Università Roma Tre, Università di Macerata, where he is Head of the Department of the Humanities, and as a researcher and lecturer in Università di Trieste. 

The president of the International James Joyce Foundation and founder of the Trieste Joyce School, McCourt has written a bookshelf’s worth of volumes on Joyce, most recently Consuming Joyce. Part a study of how Joyce was perceived in Ireland, part social history, this book uses the changing interpretations of Ulysses to explore the religious, social, and political changes sweeping Ireland. The Literary Review called the book "scandalously readable” while The Irish Times wrote "This book was crying out to be written.” 

Join us as we explore his circuitous route to an academic career, the colorful cosmopolitan town of Trieste that McCourt feels so influenced Ulysses, his experience of Italy where he’s perceived as a “britannico,” the funny side of Ulysses, and his perception of Bloomsday as “a dressed-up alternative to St. Patrick’s Day.”

Books by John McCourt

 Links for John McCourt

Our new season of Irish Stew opens with trailblazing journalist Mark Little, a former RTÉ newscaster working to make sense of social media.

Coming from a family where there was a daily scrum over who got the newspaper first,  armed with “premature cynicism” and blessed with an insatiable curiosity for what made the world work, journalism beckoned and after graduating Trinity College he landed a job with RTÉ, Ireland’s national broadcaster.

In this episode he shares stories from his “eyewitness to history” vantage point on some of the biggest news stories of his time as RTÉ’s first Washington correspondent and later host of Prime Time. 

And somehow he found time to write three books.

He explains why he switched gears and dove into the uncharted waters at the intersection of global journalism and digital media with his tech startup Storyful, the first social media newswire created out of the need to break the news faster and use social content to add context to reporting.

He’d sell Storyful to News Corp about five years later, and after leadership roles at Twitter, he and Áine Kerr founded a new company in Dublin called Kinzen with the mission to protect every online community and public conversation from disinformation campaigns and harmful content. 

Join us for an entertaining, occasionally sobering, and always engaging tour of the global media world with one of its true pioneers, Mark Little.

Links

Books

Martin Nutty's Favorite Paid Media Sites
Per Mark Little's Seamus Plug - he encourages the support of small/local media which contribute to a rigorous news environment. Some of you might know Martin has a serious news habit, Here is a list of the sites he subscribes to, or supports

Liza Donnelly: New Yorker Cartoonist & “Very Funny Ladies”

Irish Stew’s favorite cartoonist is back to tell you about her just-published book, Very Funny Ladies:an in-depth celebration of women cartoonists who have graced the pages of the famous magazine from the Roaring Twenties to the present day. 

And you learn that somewhere between way back then and now a gender gap opened up at the magazine as women cartoonists disappeared from its pages, a gap finally bridged by Liza and two other women who broke through to get their comedic art published and pave the way for many more very funny ladies to come.

Join us for the latest from Liza!

Liza Links

We last spoke with Ted Smyth back at the start of 2021. A lot has happened in the world of politics in the intervening period. Ted’s experience on both sides of the Atlantic in the worlds of  diplomacy and  corporate life make him a thoughtful and well informed commentator on recent Irish and American developments. 

Join Martin Nutty as he talks with Ted about the current state of American politics and how the Irish American community continues to be one of the more important constituencies within tgr Inited States. . Ted also discusses the impact of the  Brexit protocol on the fragile Good Friday Agreement and what we should be looking towards to insure that peace continues to be maintained in Northern Ireland. 

You can catch our original episode with Ted where we talk in greater detail about his career and background: https://www.irishstewpodcast.com/s2e2

We first sat down with Liverpudlian, Jack Byrne back in Season 2 when we talked about his first novel: Under the Bridge. You can catch that episode here: Jack Byrne: Mystery Writer.

Now Jack is back with the second installment of his Liverpool Mystery Series - Across the Water which continues the story of Paddy and Vinnie Connolly. The action moves from Liverpool to Wicklow as Vinnie traces the story of his long-deceased father against a backdrop of corruption and political violence.

Join Martin Nutty in conversation with Jack as they talk about the new book and how the violence of The Troubles touched Jack's family in the worst possible way.

 Links

Season III of Irish Stew concludes with our conversation with a very Global Irish citizen, Dan Mulhall, Ireland’s Ambassador to the United States and your guide to one of the classics of Irish literature through his recently published Ulysses: A Reader’s Odyssey.

Join us as we tour the world with one of Ireland’s top diplomats as he wields Ireland’s soft power and uses Ireland’s culture to open doors and strengthen ties.

And from one diplomatic posting to the next, he lugged one weighty tome, James Joyce’s Ulysses, a literary classic he’ll turn to repeatedly, finally writing Ulysses, a Reader’s Odyssey his highly personal guidebook through the novel’s often difficult terrain, highlighting central character Leopold Bloom as an “ambassador for our day.”

 We touch on Ireland’s ability to build bridges among countries, its seat on the UN Security Council as Russian troops massed on Ukraine’s border, the global admiration for Ireland’s peacekeeping forces, and telling Ireland’s story in the US to officials on both sides of the aisle, and always come back to how culture is Ireland’s passport to the world today.

Along the way Dan favors us with a reading from Ulysses paired with a passage from his book that explores that section.

 The episode ends with a special treat, part of the closing chapter of Ulysses, “Molly Bloom’s Soliloquy,” brilliantly performed by actress Aedín Maloney, well known for her interpretation of this piece.

NB: This episode was recorded on Feb 3, 2022 almost three weeks before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine   Sadly the hope of reducing the then building Ukrainian border tensions did not come to pass.

Dan Mulhall Links

Aedin Maloney Links

In this episode, we reach for the stars with Irish American astronaut Dr. Cady Coleman, a veteran of two Space Shuttle missions and 159 days in orbit on the International Space Station (ISS).

Cady says she’s one-quarter Irish on both sides, but that it adds up to much more than half. When not exploring outer space, she’s exploring Irish music on the flute and tin whistle, even playing with the Chieftains. On St. Patrick’s Day, she live-streamed her playing a tin whistle from Paddy Moloney and an old wooden flute from Matt Molloy while floating in space aboard the ISS as a way of sharing her cosmic experience with them and the entire Global Irish Nation.

 We discuss her journey into the exclusive ranks of space travelers, the drama of the mission aborted six seconds before liftoff, the sights and sounds of the International Space Station, and “the grief in leaving” space and adjusting to life back on earth.

 As this episode airs, Russia has invaded Ukraine with Putin, even threatening the safety of the ISS, but Cady talks of the cooperation among all nations involved with the space station and the international structures in place to ensure this orbiting outpost remains neutral territory.

Oh, she also was a consultant for Sandra Bullock on “Gravity,” dueted with Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull from the ISS, has done several TED Talks, is a successful keynote speaker, hosts the outstanding podcast Mission Interplanetary, and plays with fellow astronauts Stephen Robinson and Chris Hadfield in the musical group Bandella, and is featured on an Irish postage stamp!

 Let's light this candle!

Cady's Links:

Website: Cady Coleman

Twitter: Astro_Cady

Facebook: Astrocady

Instagram: astro_cady

Podcast: Mission Interplanetary

Video: St. Patrick’s Day from the ISS

From Carnegie Hall to Lambeau Field, Gregory Harrington elevates the Global Irish Nation Conversation through his music.

Born in Dublin, based in New York City, he is redefining the classical violin virtuoso for the 21st century, pairing his expressive lyricism, tonal beauty, and impeccable musicianship with his uncanny ability to transform film scores, jazz standards, rock and pop music into compelling violin concert pieces.

Gregory talks of performing in a hard hat and safety vest for construction workers and how he warmed up 80,000 freezing Green Bay Packers fans with his electrifying rendition of the Star-Spangled Banner.

“No matter what stage it is–stage in the broadest meaning of the word–it’s about making connections, making a difference, making one person in the audience feel something that inspires them,” he says.

With his wide-reaching appeal, he’s performed for presidents and vice presidents, celebrities, heads of state, the United Nations and millions of music fans around the globe.

Virtuoso, musical explorer, entrepreneur, collaborator, innovator…and it all started at, of all places, at the Dublin Horse Show where as a boy he first saw and heard the violin…and it was love at first sight.

Links:

In this episode we explore the “roots” and “routes” of the Irish diaspora for a very “Global Irish Nation Conversation” with CEO Patrick Greene and Historian-in-Residence Maurice J. Casey Ph.D. of Dublin’s EPIC: The Irish Emigration Museum, voted Europe’s leading tourist attraction the last three years running.

Patrick shares how an apprenticeship in archeology led him into a lifelong international career at the forefront of the movement to make museums more vibrant, relevant, and engaging for visitors.

Maurice describes himself as an “expert in histories of hope, solidarity and the Irish abroad,” and tells of his efforts to include a more diverse range of experiences in the telling of the Irish diaspora story.

We learn how EPIC transformed a vaulted warehouse basement into 20 galleries of immersive sights, sounds, and stories that connect with both the Irish diaspora and the people of Ireland exploring their emigration story.

Join us for a lively discussion on the rich history of emigration from Ireland and the lesser-known story of immigration into Ireland through the lens of EPIC: The Irish Emigration Museum.

Links:

EPIC: The Irish Emigration Museum

John Patrick Greene, CEO & Museum Director

Maurice J. Casey, Ph.D., DFA Historian in Residence

Despite growing up with no TV in a rural upstate hamlet, Kristen Shaughnessy would go on to become a fixture in New York TV news as reporter and anchor with the 24-hour news station New York 1. 

Kristen was on the frontlines of the non-stop news coverage of the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center and she takes us back to the grim reality that emerged that fateful day, sharing poignant details and discussing the journalistic challenges of reporting on this unprecedented tragedy.

We talk about the state of journalism today, the need to explore a range of viewpoints, and we delve into the toxic intersection of ageism and sexism that too often leads older workers, especially older women, to be pushed to the sidelines or shown the door.

With Irish roots stretching back to Galway, Kristen was named to Irish  America Magazine's "Top 100" list, chosen as one of the "Top 50 Irish American Power Women,'' and of the "Top Media 30." 

After our conversation with Kristen, we can see why.

Links:

Born in the Irish America hotbed of Buffalo, New   York, Jennifer Petoff lives in Dublin now. Following a career that has taken unexpected twists. A holder of a Ph.D. in Chemistry from Stanford University, we talk about women in STEM and how Jennifer made her way to Dublin, where she works in the SRE (Site Reliability Engineering) field. Jennifer is also one of four editors of Site Reliability Engineering: How Google Runs Production Systems, a highly successful publication in the world of SRE.

While Jennifer is busy in her day job, she also created Sidewalk Safari, an expansive travel blog featuring her travels in Ireland and locales further afield over the past ten years. Her posts display a keen photographic sensibility notable for their focus on colorful or unusual doorways likely cultivated by Dublin's famous Georgian Doors.

Jennifer's Business Links

Jennifer's Travel Links

On this serving of Irish Stew, we travel from Manhattan (pop. 1.6 M) to Inisheer (pop. 250) to explore the sights, sounds, haunting landscape, natural history, and vibrant culture of the Aran Islands with our affable tour guide—Irish language advocate and sean-nós singer, MacDara Ó Conaola.

MacDara guides us over the common ground all three of the Aran Islands share, what makes each one distinct, and makes a compelling case for extending your day trip to Inisheer into an overnight stay.

Along with his love of the Irish language, he shares his hopes and frustrations in keeping it a vital part of Irish life, while giving co-host Martin Nutty a chance to practice his Irish. 

We talk about the history of sean-nós and hear his contemporary take on the ancient form in a song tinged with anticipation, longing, and hope on the horizon.

But it’s not all sean-nós for MacDara whose musical tastes embrace hip hop, rap and the Beatles.

Join us for an engaging conversation with our man of Aran and check the links below to learn more of his music and Irish language efforts.

And though he may not know much about the Irish language or sean-nós, props to co-host John Lee for mastering the Irish goodbye. 

MacDara Links:

Personal website is: www.macdara.com

Gaelic Green Tongue www.gaelicgreentongue.com

Peign is Peadar Project: www.peggyandpeter.org

Twitter: https://twitter.com/PeiginP

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/macdara-%C3%B3-conaola-88b46b13/

Love Token - MacDara's Album on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Love-Token-Macdara/dp/B011E4RBOS

Through her work on the award-winning The Coastal Atlas of Ireland and on harvesting the power of ocean winds, our guest Val Cummins is a compelling advocate for embracing the potential off Ireland’s shores. 

Just named the best Irish-published book of the year, and weighing in at a hefty 10 pounds/4.5 kilos, The Coastal Atlas of Ireland is an unprecedented exploration of Ireland’s coastline and a labor of love for this trained marine geographer with a PhD in coastal management.

Simultaneously, she’s leading the way for offshore wind power development as the Emerald Project managing director and Simply Blue Group director, working to generate electricity from Ireland’s dependable ocean winds though floating turbines positioned out in the Celtic Sea, over the horizon, and out-of-sight of Ireland’s shores.

Get on board as we sail around Ireland’s coast and out to sea where Ireland’s energy future lies, in this particularly “green’ episode of Irish Stew.

Links:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/vcummins24 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/val-cummins-phd-aa9a8537

Simply Blue Group: https://simplyblueenergy.com

Floating wind background: https://simplyblueenergy.com/floating-wind

The Coastal Atlas of Ireland is available from Cork University Press at https://www.corkuniversitypress.com/CoastalAtlas-p/9781782054511.htm and many other booksellers including Amazon 

Colin Broderick likes to tell stories, needs to tell them, be they dark, dank, and dangerous, be they bright, affirming, and knowing. 

It’s all there in his new film A Bend in the River, his highly personal tale of a writer returning to his native County Tyrone still in the shadows of “The Troubles,” confronting the life and loves he left behind and writing as if his life depended on it, with boxer-turned-actor John Duddy in the title role, and featuring Kathy Kiera Clarke of Derry Girls fame.

After Tyrone came New York, where Colin says he felt free for the first time, including the freedom to let alcohol and drugs take him to the dark side, unflinchingly related when we discuss his memoir of a drinker’s life, Orangutan, a story thankfully very much in Colin’s past.

And he got others to tell their Irish-American stories in The Writing Irish of New York, his just re-released curation of essays on the rise of Irish American writers with contributions from Irish Stew guestPeter Quinn, Colum McCann, Larry Kirwan, Malachy McCourt, Mary Pat Kelly, Dan Barry, Seamus Scanlon, John Kearns, Honor Molloy and more. 

Join us for Colin’s very global Irish story, with its origins in England, it's Northern Ireland narrative, and it's tale of downfall and redemption in NYC. 

Links: 

Website:https://www.colinbroderick.com

Twitter:https://twitter.com/colin_broderick

Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/Colin-Broderick-372018999547166

Film: A Bend in the River 

Film: Emerald City:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yLtp6W9M0k&t=42

Clare McGee wears multiple hats, most notably as a principal of Innovate-NI, a management consulting company established 2016 in Derry, Northern Ireland. Along with cofounder Dr. Barney Toal, the company focuses on small business development, entrepreneurship, digital and social innovation projects.

Clare is also a cofounder of AwakenHub, a social enterprise organization whose mission is to level up opportunity, access and connectivity for women founders throughout the Island of Ireland by removing barriers to scale, investment and success.

Learn how Clare's efforts may significantly redraw the map of Derry through her participation in the Eden Foyle Riverwhose goal is to create a shared space for all the people of Ireland's fifth largest city

Clare McGee's Links:

For Paul Finnegan it all goes back to his hometown of Galway City, “a small city but I refuse to call it a town” he says and a “crucible of many great things,” notwithstanding its reputation for being “where ambition goes to die.”

But Paul explains why, despite his love for “The City of Tribes,” he traded “one great city for another'' and moved from Galway City to New York City, where he embarked on a career as a career changer--becoming the executive director of the Emerald Isle Immigration Center, working in the software and foodservice industries, and enjoying an 11-year run as the executive director of the New York Irish Center, dedicated to “Community, Culture & Care” for the Irish and beyond.

After over a decade, though, it was time for another career change. Paul’s now the director of business development for the oldest Irish news source in America, the Irish Echo, and is the producer and presenter of Centerpiece NY, his lovingly produced podcast chronicling “the lives of long-standing members of New York's Irish community, in their own words”...

...making him Irish Stew’s bitter crosstown rival for New York-based, Irish diaspora-themed podcast supremacy!

And in January Paul will add “president of the Irish Business Organization of New York” to his resume.

Not bad for a guy from Phoenix...as you’ll discover in this episode.

Links:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Paul_NY 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-e-finnegan

Irish Echo: https://www.irishecho.com

Centerpiece NY: https://www.centerpieceny.com

Centerpiece  NY Twitter: https://twitter.com/CenterPieceNY 

Irish Business Organization of New York: https://www.ibonewyork.org

How much of our history would remain buried if not for a few intrepid explorers of the past? 

In this episode we explore little known Irish diaspora stories buried in cemeteries over 1,300 miles apart in Colorado and Georgia.

Drawing on his research of an abandoned cemetery high in the Rocky Mountains, historian Prof. Jim Walsh tells the tale of the Irish miners who migrated to work hard and die young in Leadville, Colorado, the highest incorporated town in America. 

Archaeologist and historian Damian Shiels returns to Irish Stew to take us deeper into the saga of the Irish in America’s Civil War with stories of the thousands of the Irish in the Union Army forced into the Confederacy’s brutal Andersonville Prison and the hundreds who are confirmed buried there.

Damian honors these migrants through his online Andersonville Irish Project, while Jim is working to build the Leadville Irish Miners’ Memorial in hopes that their stories might continue. Both guests reveal the plight of migrants with few options in life doing their best to survive, themes that resonate still today.

Prof. James Walsh:

Doctor Damian Shiels:

Natalie Nugent O’Shea takes us from St. Paul, Minnesota, around the world with Riverdance, to Dublin to start a family, and then back home to St. Paul where she’d co-found a home for Irish arts and culture in the Midwest, the Celtic Junction Arts Center.

She tells us of her arm’s-length relationship to Ireland until moonlighting as a lighting designer for a touring production of Riverdance, falling in love not only with the music and dance, but also with one of the original Riverdancers, her eventual husband and co-collaborator in the O’Shea School of Irish Dance and Celtic Junction Arts Center, Cormac O’Sé.

Serving as the Celtic Junction’s executive director since its founding in 2010, Natalie oversees a vibrant shared space for Irish dance, music and theatre, Irish literature and language, an Irish heritage library and cross-cultural performances which in 2018 was named the Best Cultural Center by Irish Central.

Natalie also shares a heartfelt look into the hidden history of the Irish in Minnesota, especially the settlement known as the Connemara Patch, and the Irish culture that made the trek with them and how it mixed and mingled with the other cultures they encountered.

“Until we understand what is outside of us, I think we can't understand our own culture,” she says.

Join us for an insightful and passionate conversation on Irish arts and culture, thriving in the Midwest of the U.S.

Links:

Natalie Nugent O’Shea

·   Twitter:https://twitter.com/natalienoshea

Celtic Junction Arts Center

·   Website:https://celticjunction.org

·   Twitter:https://twitter.com/celticjunction

·   Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/CelticJunction

·   Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/celticjunctionartscenter

WASSUP?

Season III of Irish Stew is WASSUP!

We launch with an episode on the Irish ad man responsible for the memorable Budweiser commercial that had people around the world shouting WASSUP--Vinny Warren.

Vinny takes you from his native Galway to London, New York, Boston and finally Chicago, relates why his time as a bartender would later prove so valuable, how being a Central Park carriage driver fit into his unorthodox career strategy, his near death experiences with both the mafia and a mountain lion, how he stalked his way into his dream job, and the moment in Galway he realized that WASSUP had gone global.

Vinny tells us about starting his own agency Escape Pod where he did his most meaningful project, Metro Gun Share Program, a sly commentary on America’s gun culture and a fundraising vehicle for gun control advocacy.

Vinny may have sold Escape Pod but he’s still very much in business at vinny.warren.com.  

Maybe we can get him for the Irish Stew ad campaign!

Links:

Emer Rocke gives an insider’s perspective on the lives of those most global of Irish citizens, the people of Ireland’s diplomatic corps. The Deputy Ambassador of Ireland to the United States at time of the interview, now Director of U.S. and Canadian Relations, Emer discusses the rewards and challenges of the diplomatic life, how Ireland punches above its weight in the international arena, why other countries view Ireland as an “honest broker,” how convening is a key soft power, its current role as a member of the U.N. Security Council, and how Ireland is viewed in Washington under the Irish-friendly Biden administration.

Dublin “born, bred, and buttered” but with rural Clare and Donegal roots, Emer relates the happy accidents that led her into the Department of Foreign Affairs, her early stages work on the Irish government’s diaspora outreach, her eventful first few weeks as the Director of British Irish Relations when the U.K. voted to Brexit, and lockdown diplomacy in Washington, D.C.

An advocate for diplomatic corps diversity, she looks at the progress that’s been made and the work still to be done, and uses her “Seamus Plug” to advocate for increased mental health awareness and supporting services.

Emer Rocke Links:

Janet Behan carries on the family tradition of creativity in both her acting and writing. The London-born daughter of Dublin-born playwright Brian Behan & Celia Behan, great niece of the songwriter Peadar Kearney (author of Amhrán na bhFiann, the Irish National Anthem), and niece of the writers Dominic Behan and Brendan Behan.

On this serving of The Stew, she tells of a deprived but happy childhood “that took a bit of recovering from” and how “playing the fool” to ease family tensions led her to the stage and screen. Trained at the Central School of Speech and Drama , she is known for her roles in National Theatre productions and in the popular TV series EastEnders.

“I’ve always had a fear of being ordinary, just an ordinary human Behan,” she says quoting her uncle Brendan.

She channeled the spirit of her uncle in writing Brendan at the Chelsea which caught the eye of Adrian Dunbar who’d go on to direct and star in it’s Lyric Theatre of Belfast production which earned rave reviews in an Off-Broadway run. Recently she realized she was old enough to play her indomitable grandmother, which she did in the recent film Kathleen and Me.

Janet tells us of being too Irish for the English and too English for the Irish, saying “I think of myself as somebody who is always on her knees, begging and pleading to be allowed into Ireland...culturally and psychologically.”

Janet Behan Links:

Cauvery Madhavan adds Indian spices to this serving of Irish Stew as we trace her journey from Chennai, India to Sligo, Ireland, to County Kildare, and travel back with her to India to explore Irish stories there through her epic novelThe Tainted.

We talk of race and color in India and Ireland, the Anglo-Indians who were often more Irish than Anglo, the bonds Indian students forged with Irish revolutionaries, the dearth of spices in Sligo, the political scene in India today, how she and her family view their blended nationalities, and which flag they’d plant on the top of Mt. Everest.

Arriving in Ireland on Valentine's Day over three decades ago, Cauvery says that despite the Irish weather, she's been in love with the country ever since. 

The episode wraps with a fusion of Indian/Irish music in the form of the classic “Carolan's Favorite Jig,” performed by the notedveenavirtuoso Nirmala Rajasekar from Cauvery’s hometown of Chennai.

Cauvery Madhavan’s links:

Website:https://www.cauverymadhavan.com/

Twitter:https://twitter.com/CauveryMadhavan 

Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/madhavancauvery/

Her publisher:https://www.hoperoadpublishing.com/authors/cauvery-madhavan

Nirmala Rajasekar’s links:

Website:https://www.nirmalarajasekar.com/ 

Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/nirmalarajasekarveena/

A legal advocate for immigration in America, Irish-born, Chicago-based Fiona McEntee is a recognizable media-friendly face and voice in the U.S. immigration conversation through interviews by MSNBC, BBC, CNN, The New York Times, Politico, The Chicago Tribune…and now Irish Stew.

She is the founding and managing attorney of McEntee Law Group which represents individuals, families, and some of the world’s leading musicians (including the Coronas), artists, athletes, and entrepreneurs.

As a proud Irish immigrant and naturalized U.S. citizen, Fiona has dedicated her career to the advancement of immigrants’ rights from lobbying in Washington, D.C., to suing the Trump Administration over the controversial travel ban.

Inducted into the Chicago Irish-American Heritage Center Hall of Fame in 2019, Fiona recently published Our American Dream, a children’s book on immigration.

Fiona McEntee links:

·   Bio:https://www.mcenteelaw.com/fiona-mcentee

·   Twitter:https://twitter.com/USVisaLawyer

·   LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/fionamcentee/

·   Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/usvisalawyer/

·   McEntee Law Group website:https://www.mcenteelaw.com/

·   McEntee Law Group Twitter:https://twitter.com/McEnteeLawGroup

·   Our American Dream children’s book:https://www.ouramericandreambooks.com/

Dublin born Paddy McGrath represented his native country at the Sydney Olympics in 2000. For many, that pinnacle achievement would represent an end point to the pursuit of glory in an athletic career.  Most, who chase perfection in the hammer throwing circle, leave the sport for more lucrative endeavors.   While Paddy hung up his hammer glove some 20 years ago, he has continued his involvement in the sport giving back to an event that provided him a college education in the form of an athletic scholarship to Manhattan College in New York. 

Hear how Paddy become one of the gurus of hammer throwing and how one of his charges may make a trip to the Olympic podium in Tokyo

Paddy McGrath Links:

Fin Dwyer has always been interested in history. He grew up in Castlecomer, Kilkenny surrounded by the vestiges of the past and so  when he went to college, he pursued this passion, graduating with a master's degree in archaeology. However, the best laid plans often go awry, the freshly minted graduate started out in his chosen field only to have his career prospects crushed by the financial downturn of 2008. Coincidentally, Fin was stricken with a health crisis that left him unable to work as an archaeologist.

While  attempting to recover from his illness, Fin opted to harness his interest in history to the newly emerging field of podcasting. What started out as a distraction from his illness morphed into an alternative way to pursue his passion for times past. Join John Lee and Martin Nutty as they chat with Fin about his career and how an understanding of history is crucial in navigating the unsettled political times we live in

With the republication of his epic novelBanished Children of Eve, the Bard of Hastings-on-Hudson Peter Quinn joins us for a sometimes serious, occasionally irreverent, always insightful look into the global Irish identity from the Irish American perspective. We follow the immigrant’s evolution from the “Paddy” of the famine Irish who washed up on U.S. shores and intoBanished…to “Pat” in dogged pursuit of the American dream, to the brash urban swagger of ”Jimmy” personified by actor Jimmy Cagney and NYC Mayor Jimmy Walker. We hear how Peter’s Albany exile as the lead speechwriter for governors Hugh Carey and Mario Cuomo, sparked the drive to write under his own name, first inBanished,and later inLooking For Jimmy: A Search For Irish Americaand his mystery trilogy--Hour of the Cat, The Man Who Never Returned,andDry Bones...all with one central, recurring character: New York City.

For a 30% discount on the newly republished Fordham University Press edition ofBanished Children of Eve, go to https://www.fordhampress.com/9780823294084/banished-children-of-eve/  and enter BANISHED30 at checkout (offer expires 6/30/21).

Sorcha’s story takes us back and forth across the Irish Sea and Atlantic Ocean as she sets her course towards storytelling and journalism on radio and TV for RTE, Newstalk, BBC and CBS. With a step into the unknown she landed at the New York Film Academy earning a diploma in filmmaking and acquiring the skills she’d deploy most notably in  “Passing It On: Ballymun Kickhams” for RTE 1, her telling of the improbable tale of a hardscrabble urban gaelic football team, described in the Irish Times as “a quietly moving programme about community, belonging and kindness.”

Despite a childhood in Dublin far from the Gaeltacht, Sorcha grew up in an Irish-speaking family, immersed in traditional music and imbued with a social consciousness that informs her creative work.

Sorcha's Links:

Growing up in rural poverty in Co. Limerick, Michael Dowling was surrounded by a “cacophony of nos.”

Fortunately for Dowling there was no better motivation than being told he couldn’t do something.

That spirit and a prodigious amount of hard work propelled him through University College Cork, success on the hurling pitch, further education and a professorship at Fordham, a long run as director of Health, Education and Human Service for his mentor Gov. Mario Cuomo, to his role today as the self-described “health care optimist” who leads New York State’s largest health care system and largest private employer as CEO of Northwell Health.

Dowling tells an epic immigrant’s tale in his new memoir “After the Roof Caved In: An Immigrant's Journey from Ireland to America” and in conversation with Martin Nutty and John Lee on this episode of Irish Stew.

Website:www.michael-dowling.com

After the Roof Caved In:Amazon

Leading Through a Pandemic:Amazon

Publisher:Simon & Schuster

LinkedIn

Twitter

Jack Byrne grew up in Liverpool, the son of post WWII Irish emigrants. In his first novel, Under the Bridge, Jack takes the Liverpool of his parent's era to craft an engrossing mystery featuring the post war Irish and their struggles as they try to make there way in a country that at times is hostile to their presence.

We talk with Jack about his life, the challenges of writing and publishing a book when coming from a working class background, what it was like to be both Scouse and the son of Irish emigrants along with his plan for future books

For more on Jack and his work =>  Jack Byrne Blog

A brick came through the window and an idyllic life in the Co. Donegal resort town of Buncrana was shattered as The Troubles spilled over from Derry with the realization that “This can end.”

Working to ensure that it doesn’t end for Irish art, culture, and history in America, Turlough McConnell committed to a creative life. As a writer, producer, curator and as president/CEO of Turlough McConnell Communications, he continually creates original landmark culture projects that interpret the Irish experience in America.

In this episode, we explore Turlough’s journey from Donegal to Dublin, London, and finally to New York, his shift from corporate to culture, why the famine looms over all his creative work, why he regards Archbishop John Hughes--a.k.a. Dagger John--as the greatest Irish immigrant ever, his admiration for James Joyce and Eugene O’Neill, and why he wishes he could be our previous Irish Stew guestTed Smyth.

Join us as we explore a life lived in the creative space with a leading interpreter of “Ireland in American” in this episode of our “Global Irish Nation Conversation.”

Turlough Links:

“Seamus” Plug: History Loves A Parade: 260 Years of the St. Patrick's Day Parade
        - Online on Wed, March 17, 2021, 4:00 PM - 5:00 PM ET

·       Website:Turlough McConnell Communications 

·       LinkedIn      

·       Twitter     

·       Facebook      

From when her mother gave her a book of James Thurber’s cartoons, Liza Donnelly has expressed her wit and rising political consciousness through pencils, pens, watercolors, and now through her live drawing on an iPad at the Oscars, the Democratic National Convention, other marquee events for CBS.

On this episode, Liza traces her journey from Washington, D.C. to New York, with an impactful year-long layover in Rome, where she explored a new sense of freedom and immersed herself in the arts, especially the drawings of Leonardo Da Vinci.

In New York she used her artistic skills behind the scenes at the American Museum of Natural History. But her goal always was to get her cartoons in The New Yorker which she did through dogged determination despite all the rejections—but she’ll tell why she needed to go out on the streets of New York to sketch parking meters before the magazine published her first cartoon.

Liza reveals how the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. sparked her growing political consciousness and why she saw her art as the best way to add her voice to the cause.

While it was in New York that Liza began to feel Irish, that feeling intensified in her first trip to Ireland where she found a warm welcome, new inspirations for sketching, and a kinship with the people from a shared passion for politics and love of poetry—because for Liza Donnelly cartooning is a form of poetry.

Viewing life as “something of a random walk,” Ted Smyth went from rural to urban, to international, from leadership roles in diplomacy to C-suite roles in Fortune 500 companies, to a rich post-corporate career in Irish American community leadership.

On this episode of Irish Stew, Ted describes his journey from a protestant farming community in Co. Westmeath, to “finding his place” in Trinity College Dublin, an intellectual “petri dish” that fostered his growing social justice focus. That led him to Ireland’s diplomatic corps and his work on conflict resolution in Northern Ireland and Irish America engagement in the peace process.

Settling stateside, he forged an enviable business career instilled with his social responsibility ethos and is now in his “Act III,” he serves the Global Irish Nation through his writing, speaking, and volunteer service, including his roles as president of the advisory boards of both Glucksman Ireland House and UCD Clinton Institute.

Shaunagh Connaire is an award winning journalist who has reported from some of the most challenging and troubled spots on the globe. In her most recent venture, a podcast called Media Tribe, she has shifted her focus towards highlighting the work of critically acclaimed journalists and media executives, providing a forum to tell the story behind the story

Shaunagh will be Irish Stew's guest on the first episode of season 2. For more on Irish Stew, please visit: https://www.irishstewpodcast.com

Ruth Cannon BL is a Dublin based barrister specializing in property and probate law. Ruth acts as a guide in giving  an introduction to both the the esoterica and arcane that constitutes the Irish Legal profession and it's history on this episode.

Together with cohosts John Lee and Martin Nutty, Ruth details the state of the Irish Law and why this third decade of the 21st century is an exciting time for the profession especially as the impact of Brexit is felt.

We also discuss some of the extensive content Ruth has been published on her blog: Stories of the Four Courts which features tales of pioneering barristers, duels to the death and even a ghost story

Alison McKenna shares tales from acting on the stages of the Abbey, Gate, and Royal Shakespeare Company, traces her journey as a producer for the theatre and cultural programming such as New York’s centerpiece 1916 Centenary commemoration, and demonstrates why she’s an in-demand voiceover artist in the burgeoning field of audiobooks.

Along the way she tells us why tap dancing’s loss was acting’s gain, how fitting into a particular costume was the opportunity she needed to win her first role at the Gate, the cheeky comment that helped her land a part at London’s National Theatre, how Hozier ended up performing at one of her events, and why Ireland needs to embrace its “culture makers,” now, more than ever. 

Learn more about Alison McKenna at http://alison-mckenna.com

Thanks for listening and we welcome your comments and reviews at: https://www.irishstewpodcast.com

For 10 years, Damian Shiels has mined the American Civil War pension files to tell the staggering story of Irish participation in that conflict. This archive is the richest source of early 19th century Irish social history. John Lee and Martin Nutty talk with Damian about his herculean work, his love of history and how that fits with his career in archaeology.  For more on Damian's work visit his amazing blog at: https://irishamericancivilwar.com

Don't forget to subscribe to Irish Stew Podcast on your favorite podcast platform and you can visit www.IrishStewPodcast.com to get the latest on our work and provide feedback on our efforts.

Ciarán Cannon is the elected TD (Irish Member of Parliament aka  Dáil Éireann) for the Galway East constituency. Ciarán served as Minister of State for the Diaspora and International Development from 2017 - 2020. John Lee and Martin Nutty talk with Ciarán about the importance of the Diaspora to Ireland, the Irish word: Meitheal, the difficult decisions that elected officials are sometimes called upon to make and Ciarán's abiding interest in music.

Please feel free to leave comments on this episode on the associated episode page at www.IrishStewPodcast.com

Geoff Cobb is a New York City school teacher, a blogger, a columnist and a historian with a focus on the lesser recorded histories of the personalities and neighborhoods that constitute the seething ferment that is New York City. Our conversation  focuses on Geoff's upcoming book detailing the lives of Irish New Yorkers who left a mark on the city and the state.

Aisling MacRunnels came to America on an athletic scholarship in the 1980s. Hear Aisling's story detailing the windy route taken to the upper tiers of the Silicon Valley hierarchy. Learn how Aisling leveraged her Irish EQ to achieve success in America's tech land.

Jeffrey Hayzlett is a former Fortune 100 C-Suite executive turned C-Suite Network CEO, keynote speaker, media entrepreneur, and TV & podcast host. We talk about what drives him in business, his ringside seat for the demise of Kodak, what he really thinks of Donald Trump after working with him on The Apprentice, his reasons for living in South Dakota, and why his first visit to Ireland meant so much to him.

Bill Schultz,  Executive VP/Content Development at Cadence13, has had a career spanning more than 30 years in the radio and podcast world. Our conversation delves into the fast changing podcasting industry and how the most creative people in the audio arts are gravitating towards this space

Canadian by birth, New Yorker by choice, Bridget Bray recounts her genealogical journey from avocation to profession as she blows the dust off the topic with her insights on internet and DNA research, how she followed leads and knocked on doors in Ireland, why dog licenses are one of her workarounds for information gaps, and her tips on how to break through the frustrating genealogical “brick walls.

Preview of Irish Stew the podcast for the Global Irish Nation featuring interviews with fascinating influencers proud of their Irish Edge. If you're Irish born or hyphenated Irish, this is the podcast that brings all the Irish together