Culture File

The Comfort Zone: writer, critic and author of Dog Days, Emily LaBarge arrives to assert the unexpected magic of Cat Power's Jukebox, the 2008 covers album taking on Hank Williams, Billie Holiday and Joni Mitchell among others. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Deep in the crate-crawling world of Conor Guilfoyle on mission is to save the lost recordings of the Irish jazz scene. The music of gum-chewing, with composer Andy Igamels, whose new album includes a measure of that mundane mastication; plus, a moment of pause as Patrick O'Laoghaire sails by with the latest of his island postcards. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Deep in the crate-crawling world of Conor Guilfoyle on mission is to save the lost recordings of the Irish jazz scene. The music of gum-chewing, with composer Andy Igamels, whose new album includes a measure of that mundane mastication; plus, a moment of pause as Patrick O'Laoghaire sails by with the latest of his island postcards. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Culture File Presents The Comfort Zone: artist and performer Day Magee comes to unpack the enduring value of C.S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters, the 1942 epistolary satire of memos from a senior devil to his nephew, still green in the ways of evil. Inspo for a conversation that seeks to answer questions such as what is eternity? Is modern culture rubbish? How will heaven sort out the issue of rema...

Culture File Presents The Comfort Zone: artist and performer Day Magee comes to unpack the enduring value of C.S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters, the 1942 epistolary satire of memos from a senior devil to his nephew, still green in the ways of evil. Inspo for a conversation that seeks to answer questions such as what is eternity? Is modern culture rubbish? How will heaven sort out the issue of rema...

The full interview with Meghan O'Gieblyn from this week's Culture File.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

"We have to try to cure our faults by attention and not by will,” a thought from French mystic Simone Weil, inspires Meghan O’Gieblyn's new book, Will and Attention, a probing philosophical examination of addiction, recovery, beauty and grace. As the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir heads to Ireland for the NCH's ECM 2026 festival, their conductor and Estonian musical mainstay, Tõnu Kaljuste ta...

The Comfort Zone: dancer and choreographer, Favour "Official PAK" Odusola brings the choreographic art of Les Twins for appreciation, and also creates a Comfort Zone Choreo (seated) for celebrated non-dancer Colm Tóibín. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

An epic trilogy of documentaries dedicated to a cinematic biography of Argentine writer, Jorge Luis Borges, premiered at this year's Venice Film Festival. Its director, Mariano Llinás and its main character, archivist and translator, Ernesto Montequin unfurl their completist life of Borges. An award winner at this year's Ars Electronica festival was SummitShare, a project from Zambia which uses AR...

Musician, conceptual artist and regular Eno collaborator, Beatie Wolfe encourages The Comfort Zone crew to contemplate the not-quite-natural silence of an anechoic chamber. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Culture File's summer reading club concludes with Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius, Jorge Luis Borges' story of a possibly lost, possibly never-existing civilisation, hunted down by a literary flatfoot called Borges and his BFF, Adolfo Bioy Casares. Writer and critic Orit Gat helps Luke Clancy and Colm Tóibín assess the damage to the fabric of reality, while Ariel Hernandez (guitar) and Dermot Dunne (ac...

Culture File's summer reading club continues with Funes, His Memory, Jorge Luis Borges' tale of a man benefiting and suffering from total recall. Colm Tóibín and Luke Clancy are joined by Joseph Rizzo Naudi, a blind writer and researcher who works on making art and exhibitions engaging through the creative use of blindness. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Culture File's August reading club featuring the Fictions of Argentine writer, Jorge Luis Borges. Colm Tóibín and Luke Clancy are joined by poet and novelist, Susannah Dickey, for Culture File's latest voyage into Borges' short stories. This time, they find themselves on a mysterious island dreaming new life into being, while wondering is art even worth making. See omnystudio.com/listener for priv...

Culture File's August reading club featuring the Fictions of Argentine writer, Jorge Luis Borges. Colm Tóibín and Luke Clancy are joined by poet and novelist, Susannah Dickey, for Culture File's latest voyage into Borges' short stories. This time, they find themselves on a mysterious island dreaming new life into being, while wondering is art even worth making. See omnystudio.com/listener for priv...

Art as history, and history as art in the research-driven, karaoke-spiced work of artist duo Ruth Clinton and Niamh Moriarty, showcased in a provocative new exhibition, A Disentailing Deed, at Project in Dublin. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Culture File's August reading club featuring the Fictions of Argentine writer, Jorge Luis Borges. Luke and Colm welcome a special guest to discuss one story from Borges's collection Fictions. This time, we're on the trail of Pierre Menard, an improbable literary figure who has re-written Don Quixote from scratch. Poet, Ella Frears, and composer and improviser, Olesya Zdorovetska, join the search p...

Culture File's August reading club featuring the Fictions of Argentine writer, Jorge Luis Borges. Luke and Colm welcome a special guest to discuss one story from Borges's collection Fictions. This time, we're on the trail of Pierre Menard, an improbable literary figure who has re-written Don Quixote from scratch. Poet, Ella Frears, and composer and improviser, Olesya Zdorovetska, join the search p...

Translator and poet, Andrew Fitzsimons on translating the complete haikus of Basho, the 17th century master of the form, and on the work of one unfortunate contemporary follower, The Haiku Killer. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Culture File launches a summer reading club on the fictions of Argentine writer, Jorge Luis Borges. Each week, Luke and Colm welcome a special guest to explore a story from Borges' collection, Fictions. First up, The South, a dream-like mystery tale of a man held somewhere between life, death and Buenos Aires. Joining the pursuit this time, scholar and author, Patricia N. Klingenberg. See omnystud...

Luke Clancy and panel make the case for loving some teeming critters of the invertebrate kingdom. Advocating for their favourites are: Rachel McKenna (shieldbugs); Liam Lysaght (wasps); Cassia Gaden Gilmartin (earwigs); and Nessa Darcy (woodlice). Recorded live at National Botanic Gardens, Glasnevin as part of Dublin Book Festival. First Broadcast: 151125 See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy in...

The Comfort Zone: artist, writer and filmmaker Caroline Mac Cathmhaoil leads Colm and Luke into Claire Denis’s 1999 film Beau Travail, a kind of waking dream of a movie about jealousy and justice and the wages of colonialism, explored, in part, through the medium of contemporary dance. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Something for the weekend? Colm Tóibín inserts the Kanneh-Mason sibling's take on Fauré's Après Un Rêve into his dinosaur (car); Caroline Mac Cathmhaoil plugs the poetry and YouTube performances of Joelle Taylor, while Luke Clancy suggests a trio of compilations from Swedish label, XKatedral, on which you may hear, among other sounds, organ chiffing. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy informa...

Lots of fun at fun at Rob Heaslip's Irish Wake Amusements; floral action from Amsterdam with Danh Vo's show at the Stedelijk Museum; Paddy Woodworth's Naturalist's Bookshelf too turns to flowers; and Patrick O'Laoghaire holds a wildflower in his hand. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Comfort Zone: musician, composer and improviser, Olesya Zdorovetska encourages Colm Tóibín and Luke Clancy to encounter the many freedoms offered in Ornette Coleman's 1959 free jazz throwdown/manifesto album, The Shape of Jazz To Come. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Simon Reynolds has made a habit of writing books that offer to rethink the histories of popular music, such as Rip It Up and Start Again, his keywork on Post-Punk, and his story of electronic dance music, Energy Flash. Now, he's back with a highly personal history of the shapes of music from 1984 to 1994, from the hazy 'snowdrift' assaults of My Bloody Valentine, to the paraslacker aesthetics of T...