Here's How

Repeats on podcasts don’t always make a lot of sense, but if you are subscribed, you’ll know that I put up a podcast from 2019 into the feed again last week; the podcast was an investigation into RTÉ and their relationship with the AA which supplied them with AA Roadwatch, the erstwhile traffic news segments. […]

I think that it’s about time to hear this edition of the podcast from 2019 again. Dr Michael Foley is professor emeritus at the school of media at TU Dublin – formerly DIT – also a member of the NUJ’s Ethics Council, and has been invited by the International federation of Journalists and UNESCO to […]

Uki Goñi is a historian, journalist and author who has lived in the United States, Ireland, and Argentina. ***** Sometimes it helps to draw a parallel between two events in the news, but two big recent stories – in Ireland, the scandal of RTÉ lying about Ryan Tubridy’s salary, and internationally the over-before-it-began apparent coup […]

James Ker-Lindsay is Visiting Professor at the London School of Economics. His research focuses on conflict, peace and security in South East Europe (Western Balkans, Greece, Turkey and Cyprus), European Union enlargement, and secession and recognition in international politics. He has created many Youtube videos explaining his subject. ***** The Financial Times recently made a […]

Freda Wallace is the cohost of the Gender Nebulous podcast. Statistics of the sharp rise in the number of referrals to the Tavistock clinic, and their age distribution are here, and here. False claims that puberty blockers, given to children to delay typical-age puberty are ‘completely reversable’ are incredibly common, and have been made by the taxpayer-funded […]

Freda Wallace is the cohost of the Gender Nebulous podcast. ***** I want to comment on a rant that was previously posted on this podcast. The rant in question was posted with episode 120 Levelling the Field and the topic was Minimum Unit Pricing for Alcohol or MUP. MUP, long-time listeners may recall, prohibits the […]

Graham Linehan, now back on twitter, is the creator of numerous famous TV shows including Father Ted. *****

Annabel Fenwick Elliott is a British freelance journalist who previously worked for the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail. ***** It might have been Tomorrow’s World, that science programme from the BBC from my dim and distant childhood, where they demonstrated an early chatbot, although I think it wasn’t called that. You typed in some […]

Dan McClellan is a public scholar of the Bible and religion and author of the book YHWH’s Divine Images: A Cognitive Approach. ***** I don’t much talk about Jordan Peterson, I don’t think that he is as interesting a character as the internet makes out, certainly not as interesting as he thinks he is himself. […]

Graham Neary is a financial commentator who has been a fund manager and analyst in the London financial markets. ***** The transport minister, Eamon Ryan who is also leader of the Green Party, it has been announced will set up an inter-departmental group to make sure the transport sector meets its emissions reduction targets. Related […]

Dafydd Iwan is the former president of Plaid Cymru, the Welsh nationalist party. ***** Bertie Ahern, we are told, had been readmitted, to Fianna Fáil. It might be better to use the term rehabilitated. Fianna Fáil activists gave him a standing ovation at an event recently, it was to mark the 25th anniversary of the […]

John Rentoul is the chief political commentator for the Independent. ***** I’m pessimistic. I’m not naturally a pessimistic person, but I’m pessimistic. Maybe I’m getting older, maybe I’m entering the ‘the whole world is going to hell’ phase of my life, maybe I’m right to be pessimistic, maybe I’m not paying attention to the right […]

Jesse Spafford is a research fellow at Trinity College Dublin working on the project REAL – Rights and Egalitarianism. His research is focused on ethics and political philosophy with particular attention paid to debates between libertarians, socialists, and anarchists over the moral status of the market and the state. ***** I was talking to someone […]

Brooks Newmark was a British Conservative Party MP for the constituency of Braintree and is now a PhD candidate at the University of Oxford. ***** I’ve got a proposal for tax reform. The idea is to make tax easier and simpler to understand, simpler for the government to collect, thereby lower costs which would lower […]

Brendan is the Labour Party TD for Wexford, and former party leader. ***** So, we’re talking about a war. We’re talking about a war where a huge, nuclear-armed superpower, attacks a territory to its south that this formerly-communist superpower views not as a real country, it views but as an integral part of its own […]

Eoin Ó Murchú was the political editor for Raidió na Gaeltachta. *****

Aoife Gallagher is a research analyst for the Institute for Strategic Dialogue and author.

Aoife Gallagher is a research analyst for the Institute for Strategic Dialogue and author. *****

Kellie Armstrong an Alliance party MLA for the Strangford constituency. ***** I saw a load of comments from commentators online, from talking heads on radio and TV, from people on Twitter, that the mobilisation ordered by Putin last week to try to shore up his invasion of Ukraine was stupid. It was stupid to try […]

It’s Q&A time! Thank you to everyone who sent in a question!

Joel Keys is a Belfast Loyalist activist and prolific tweeter. ***** I discovered a big discrepancy. Well, I didn’t so much discover it as notice it. And it isn’t really isn’t a big discrepancy, it is an enormous discrepancy. A gigantic discrepancy. A sort of a so-big-you-could-see-it-from-space. discrepancy This is the discrepancy. Have a look […]

Marc Coleman is a business consultant, former broadcaster and journalist. He is currently working on a book on the persistence of western democracy. ***** ‘Magical thinking’ is a great phrase that I learnt years ago, it’s a concept that’s useful to understand someone’s thought processes, maybe even your own. If you know what it is, […]

Jessica Berlin is a commentator at Deutsche Welle News, and she has worked for 15 years working with in security policy, transatlantic affairs, sustainable business and technology, and aid industry reform across Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and North America. She founded the Berlin-based strategy consultancy CoStruct, she holds an MSc in Political Economy of Emerging […]

Professor Julian Nida-Rümelin is is a Professor of Philosophy and Political Theory at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. He was the State Minister for Culture of the Federal Republic of Germany under Gerhard Schröder. Professor Nida-Rümelin, along with dozens of other prominent Germans signed a letter in Die Zeit, a leading German newspaper, about the […]

Seán Keyes is the finance correspondent for the Currency, a subscription news website. ***** I spoke to a Sinn Féin supporter in the years after the Good Friday Belfast agreement, I think it was during one of the interminable negotiations trying to get DUP to participate and have the institutions up and running, and she […]