BOLD with Joe McGucken

Hello everybody! Thank you so much for listening and supporting the BOLD podcast for it's short life. It's given me an opportunity, to develop it into a brand new RTE podcast called RAMBLE.  So if you liked BOLD and want to hear more of the same. Please follow me over to my new podcast RAMBLE. 

I'm Joe McGucken and on this weeks episode of the BOLD podcast My dog Fred done a runner and went missing, and somehow that got me thinking about old Nokia ringtone, and sending cartoon porn to friends through infrared. All on the same day of Oliver's birthday party: pure chaos wrangling kids at The Smurfs movie and a Burger King party where we were basically public enemy number one for existing....

What's up! I'm Joe McGucken, and this week on the BOLD podcast, you're lucky I'm even here. I was violently knocked off my electric scooter by a car and somehow survived to tell the tale. As if my week wasn't bad enough after being attacked by a rabid bat in a Galway pub. My self defense involved a lot of screaming. What was I doing in Galway? Well, somehow I got roped into a football panel discus...

Someone in Cork just scored a ridiculous EuroMillions jackpot this week. €250 Million! And while everyone's celebrating them (and the shop that sold the ticket!), I'm here to tell you that sometimes that kind of luck can be a curse. On this episode of the BOLD podcast, I'm diving into the mad stories of lotto winners who hit the jackpot, only for their lives to spiral into chaos, misery, or worse....

Happy Father's Day! Or Da's Day, because I'm not a priest. On this Da's Day episode of BOLD, I unpack the weird job of being a Da. One day you're the main character, the next you're a chauffeur, a chef, and a professional arse-wiper for a tiny, demanding prima donna. We'll also take a look at some weird Hollywood das (looking at you, Eddie Murphy) and even weirder ones in nature like the seahorse...

This week on the BOLD podcast, I talk to Pat and Breda Curran. Their home was petrol-bombed in a case of mistaken identity, destroying everything and tragically taking the life of their dog. It's a truly horrific story. But thankfully they were fortunate enough to escape with their son. We reflect on Pat's art, which has been a source of healing for him in the past, often showing scenes from old D...

This week on BOLD, I head to Corinthians Boxing Club, an institution of the Inner City. I chat with head trainer Kevin Corcoran about the club’s 100-year history, my connection with it as a young person, and how a place charging €2 a session produced Olympic champions like Kellie Harrington. We also talk about why the HSE is failing families with autistic kids, and how a boxing clubs like this can...

I'm Joe, this is BOLD. This week I planned a romantic birthday for Máire. Not a spa day or a European day-trip. Instead, she drags me to the Dublin Criminal Courts of Justice to spectate the high profile Richard Satchwell murder trial. It wasa terrible experience: frazzled barristers, no transcripts, and the judge baffled with the prosecution. I’m paranoid the jury’ll recognize me and I'll cause a...

The Pope is dead. Pope Francis, the first Latin American pontiff, the Jesuit reformer, the guy who blessed gay couples and pissed off conservatives, dropped dead on Easter Monday. So what happens now? This episode digs into the aftermath: the secretive conclave to elect his successor (where the frontrunner is an Italian bureaucrat named Pietro Parolin with tasty betting odds), the Vatican’s long h...

This week I got you good. You thought I was getting deported. Well imagine how I felt when Maire got me with that same April Fools prank. She had me packing my bags convinced ICE were after me.  This episode’s a rollercoaster: from fake embassy emails to me packing my bags for El Salvador, to why Washington DC might be the most joyless city. I have an interesting conspiracy theory about cherry blo...

On this week's episode of the BOLD podcast I'm still stuck in Trumpland. The city of Hash shops on every corner. But you can't find a shop for a bottle of water! I was parched wandering around this swamp looking for something to drink. I’m halfway through my run of Waiting for Godot here, which is going... Betterish. considering half the audience doesn’t realize they’re allowed to laugh. Between s...

On this episode of the BOLD podcast we touch on the disappearance of Garron Noone after a controversial video about immigration in Ireland landed him in some hot water after Conor Mcgregor's visit to the White House. Also I go down to a protest outside the Department of Education that Donald Trump is dismantling to speak to one of the organizers of the protest.

In this BOLD episode, I’m recording from a strangely deserted apartment building in Washington DC, where I’m rehearsing for a production of Waiting for Godot that’s been… an experience. Cast members are dropping like flies, the production team are falling sick, and I’m starting to wonder if I should’ve stayed in Ireland.  I’ll also take you on a tour around the gentrified streets of DC, pubs that...

On this weeks BOLD podcast I'll give you a little update on my journey to America for a show I'm performing in. I've been rehearsing for just a couple of weeks back in Ireland, and after one of the rehearsals I went to a pub for a pint. In that pub I met a very interesting character. Colin Judge. He's an Irish Ping Pong Paralympian. He has a rare condition which led him to be born with no legs and...

On this week's episode of the BOLD podcast I'm flying solo. It's been an eventful week. I was presented with an opportunity to play the Co-Lead in Samuel Beckett's play Waiting For Godot. The only issue is that It's a 5 week run in the Land Of Opportunity - USA. I'm making my way over to the Crime Capital, Washington DC on a week were Zelensky was roasted in the White House for not wearing a suit....

In this week's episode of the BOLD podcast, I went to a hotel bedroom to meet Ireland's most successful pornstar, Andy Lee. He talks about his time growing up in Dublin's inner city, getting evicted from his home by the drug marches as a child, Losing his ma, and struggling to settle. Eventually he ended up in London where he would start his porn empire. He talks about it all in this episode and h...

"Hear ye! hear ye!" On a cold Thursday night in the backyard of Synge Street National School, a group of people gather together to train for Armoured Combat like the knights of olde. Wearing full metal armour and swinging heavy-ish Swords at each other they practice to win a grand battle at a huge event with hopes of one day becoming king of one of the many kingdoms across the world. They are part...

In this episode of the BOLD podcast, I took a trip to the Dublin Wellbeing Centre to meet Debora for a tea leaf reading. I was hoping to get some lotto numbers or maybe an insight into the next crypto boom. But what I left with was a little bit more profound than I expected from a cup of tea. I also talk to her after about her other experiences with shamanic practices, medicines and how grateful s...

This episode explores the evolution of social media, from the innocent days of Bebo and MSN to the toxic outrage culture, clickbait, politically driven, divisive social media landscape of today. I talk with Irish musician Nealo about his habit of stepping away from social media, and Plugging Out for weeks at a time, the impact it has on his mental health, and his concerns about his autistic son gr...

I've been abandoned by my guest in this episode of BOLD. It's brought up traumatic childhood memories of summer trips to Cavan with my youth club. Getting bullied on the regular. And how I learned to stand up for myself, but received a broken jaw for my efforts.  I try to ask myself 36 scientific questions that are designed to ask your partner to make them instantly fall in love with you. And by t...

James MacManus is a Tipperary man with an extraordinary goal: to summit Mount Everest without oxygen! Twice he’s attempted this near-impossible feat, and twice he’s been turned back by the sheer brutality of the mountain. But undeterred, James is gearing up for a third attempt at one of the most dangerous and demanding challenges in human history. Only 229 people have ever accomplished this, while...

There's something special about Irish pubs when we're on holiday. They’re our little piece of home from home. No matter where we go, from Salou to Timbuktu, we're always sniffing out the Molly Malones, or Danny Boy. But what happens when you try to create that magic in… Uganda? This week, I talk to Nigel Sutton, an Irish entrepreneur who decided to bring the craic to Kampala. In 2003, after Mullig...

Imagine having zero military experience, a slight drinking problem, and deciding to head straight to the frontline of the war in Ukraine... for the craic. That’s exactly what self proclaimed Lord Mayor of Leixlip did. In this episode, I sat down with this absolute mad lad in the corner of the only pub in Leixlip where he’s not banned. We got into his wild story: from his controversial GoFundMe cam...

Michael Zervos is an American film director currently attempting to break a world record by travelling to every country in the world in the fastest time. Along the way he has been interviewing people from every country and asking them one question - "What is the happiest moment of your life" During his brief stop in Ireland I caught up with him for this episode. Anyone who knows me will know how m...

In this festive episode of BOLD, we sit down with Michael J Sullivan, a Dublin actor who steps into the big red suit every Christmas to become the man, the myth, the legend - Santa Claus! But there's a lot more to Michael's story than I expected from when I first sat down to interview him.