Irish Stew Podcast

From Crumlin and Tallaght to the City of Brotherly Love, Irish Stew spins another Philadelphia story, appropriately timed to America's Fourth of July celebration of the Declaration of Independence forged in Philadelphia 250 years ago. Recorded in advance of Philadelphia's Irish American Business Chamber & Network's Ambassador Awards Luncheon, cohost John Lee talks with John Cumm...

What's Sherlock Holmes doing in New York's most Fenian pub? That's the intrigue at the heart of Terror From America: A Sherlock Holmes Adventure, the debut novel from journalist and historian Terry Golway, and the question Irish Stew podcast cohosts Martin Nutty and John Lee set out to answer before a packed, raucous house at Ernie O'Malley's on the first of June. A Staten...

When Frederick Douglass left Belfast in 1845, only seven years after escaping slavery, he declared: "Wherever else I feel myself to be a stranger, I will remember I have a home in Belfast." That remarkable statement from a Black abolitionist finding radical welcome in a 19th-century Irish city is the beating heart of North Star , the immersive musical and theatrical experience that North...

While Team Irish Stew preps for its Fresh Stew LIVE before a paying (!) audience on June 1, past guest Sean Granahan and The Floating Hospital he leads are gearing up for June 2, the evening of their 160th anniversary Summer Gala. Given the charity's deep roots serving Irish and other impoverished newcomers to New York, John and Martin are revisiting their conversation with Sean to shine a fr...

Balmy spring weather lured Irish Stew cohosts John Lee and Martin Nutty to Central Park to record this episode in an urban pine forest, steps from the site of Seneca Village where so many Irish immigrants once lived. Backed by a chorus of birdsong, the podcasters preview their most ambitious show yet: Fresh Stew LIVE, a podcast recording before a live audience with historian and now novelist Terry...

It’s a wrap for Irish Stew as the podcast-in-residence at the 2026 Solas Nua Capital Irish Film Festival in Metro DC with this episode of five conversations spanning three films: Saipan , Báite , and Conveyance . The Festival’s Opening Night feature Saipan unspools the drama that played out on that distant island between the manager of the 2002 World Cup-bound Irish football team Mick McCarthy , p...

Though the latest Irish Stew guest is Aileesh Carew, CEO and Museum Director of Dublin’s EPIC The Irish Emigration Museum, this interview takes place in Philadelphia, upstairs again at Fergie’s Pub. Both Aileesh and cohost John Lee came to the “City of Brotherly Love” for the Irish American Business Chamber and Network’s Ambassador’s Awards where Aileesh would accept the Uachtarán Award for EPIC a...

No Ordinary Heist had just finished rolling when Irish Stew cohosts Martin Nutty and John Lee took to the AFI Silver Theatre stage on the second night of the 2026 Solas Nua Capital Irish Film Festival in metro-Washington, DC. Before a near-capacity crowd of almost 400, the podcasters-in-residence led the post-screening Q&A on the gripping new Irish thriller inspired by the 2004 Northern Bank r...

North Dublin native Fergus “Fergie” Carey didn’t just open a bar in Philadelphia, he helped invent a neighborhood, a scene, and a sense of community that stretches from Center City to the Irish arts world and back again. In this on‑location episode recorded upstairs at Fergie’s Pub on Sansom Street, Irish Stew cohost John Lee traces Fergie’s journey from Burgerland on O’Connell Street to becoming...

A language returned Mollie Guidera returns to the Irish Stew for a second conversation. Since her first appearance in November 2023, she has published The Gaeilge Guide and grown Irish with Molly into the fastest-growing Gaeilge community in the world — more than 10,000 students across 75 countries. But what Mollie is really doing is harder to quantify: dismantling the barriers that sit between Ir...

Award-winning director, producer, and writer Ruán Magan joins Irish Stew for a timely conversation ahead of his double appearance at this weekend’s Solas Nua Capital Irish Film Festival, where he’ll present two very different visions of Ireland on screen. Ruán reflects on a creative life that has taken him from early collaborations with his brother, writer and broadcaster Manchán Magan, through de...

For it’s 150th episode, Irish Stew podcast welcomes back a clear-eyed optimist for troubled times, Michael J. Dowling. Glucksman Ireland House is honoring him with the Outstanding Public Service and Lifetime Contribution to Public Health Award at its New York City Gala on Tuesday, March 3, 2026 .  After decades of work transforming Northwell Health into an American healthcare leader, Michael has s...

Filmmaker Nuala O’Connor joins Irish Stew cohosts Martin Nutty and John Lee for a “Global Irish Nation Conversation” on her documentary In Time: Dónal Lunny , her filmic tone poem in black and white on the enigmatic innovator of Irish music. Co‑founder of the seminal groups Planxty, The Bothy Band, and Moving Hearts, Dónal introduced the flat-back bouzouki to Irish music and broke through with new...

In this conversation recorded at the 2025 Capital Irish Film Festival, host Martin Nutty sits down with two trailblazing Irish filmmakers who are pushing boundaries in their respective genres. Aislinn Clarke discusses her groundbreaking Irish-language horror film Fréwaka , exploring how her childhood love of horror (she saw The Exorcist at seven!) and her father's commitment to preserving the...

Recorded at the 2025 Capital Irish Film Festival in Washington DC, this episode features a conversation with two Irish women who have both made significant transitions into film from other careers.  Kathleen Harris , a former Irish Times video journalist, discusses her environmental documentary Birdsong , which won the 2025 CIFF Audience Award for Favorite Irish Feature.  Denise Deegan , a novelis...

Irish Stew wraps its Off the Beaten Craic in the Hidden Heartlands Series in Drumshanbo, the Co. Leitrim town rewriting the rural renewal playbook. What began as a desperate effort to save a shuttered jam factory has become one of Ireland's most remarkable community-led success stories. At The Food Hub in Drumshanbo, cohosts Martin Nutty and John Lee hear from Cllr Enda McGloin and onsite man...

Irish Stew’s latest “Off the Beaten Craic” adventure in County Leitrim discovers three new ways to slow down, tune in, and taste this corner of Ireland, through food, forest, and a gentle spin along the Jackalope Trail. First, we meet Malaysian‑born chef and restaurateur Sham Hanifa . At age 20 he answered an ad to work in Ireland, arriving in Carrick‑on‑Shannon jet‑lagged and short on money, but...

It may be the smallest county in Connacht, the smallest by population in Ireland, with the smallest stretch of beach on the Wild Atlantic Way, but in their latest episode the Irish Stew podcasters learn that Leitrim is capitalizing on its offer of a great quality of life, relative affordability, entrepreneurial energy, appeal to a more mobile workforce, and its “slow adventure” approach experienci...

Irish Stew Podcast is “Off the Beaten Craic” in Co. Longford for the sound of the low whistle and the sight of an Iron Age roadway at the Corlea Trackway Visitors Centre, located a half hour’s drive north from their home-away-from-home in Athlone. There they met their guide Noel Carberry who opens and closes the interview with his virtuosity on the larger, lower-pitched variation of the traditiona...

The Irish Stew podcasters venture across Westmeath one last time, to the county’s eastern reaches to explore the picturesque village of Tyrrellspass, where they once again find a story of community commitment…and a bog. The community leader giving cohosts John Lee and Martin Nutty the grand tour of his charming town is Eugene Dunbar, a retired teacher who never retired from educating anyone who’d...

In this end of years politics episode, Martin Nutty sits down with Ted Smyth, former Irish diplomat and president of the advisory board at Glucksman Ireland House, NYU, to discuss the political landscape on both sides of the Atlantic. Smyth offers stark assessments of Trump's second term, characterizing it as an assault on American democracy with unchecked executive power. However, he finds h...

Irish Stew couldn’t make it to Dublin, so cohost Martin Nutty and John Lee settled for the Dublin House, a venerable watering hole on New York’s Upper West Side, known for its low-key vibe, high quality pints and its 10-foot-tall neon sign in the shape of a harp that has been lighting the way to a great craic for decades. The occasion was a meet-up over a pair of those pints for “Stew in Review,”...

In this season of giving, Irish Stew welcomes Pennsylvania-born lawyer-turned-nonprofit leader Sean Granahan, the president of The Floating Hospital, a 160-year-old New York charity with deep Irish roots that still cares for the city’s poorest families. Founded in 1866 out of Trinity Church in the wake of the Civil War Draft Riots, it first served emancipated Black families and post–famine Irish i...

The Irish Midlands flow to the relentless rhythm of the River Shannon and along its banks the Irish Stew podcasters found themselves again, Day Five of their “Off the Beaten Craic in the Hidden Heartlands” wanderings, gazing across its broad expanse from the docks of the County Offaly town of Banagher. There, cohosts John Lee and Martin Nutty met local historian James Scully and caught up with an...

Ireland has no shortage of stately manors, but as Irish Stew hosts Martin Nutty and John Lee learned, no other historic property has a legacy like Co. Offaly’s Birr Castle Demesne, which for generations has been an incubator of breakthroughs in engineering and science. With local historian and educator Brian Kennedy as their guide, the podcasters share the story of the Victorian-era, steampunk-sty...