IRELAND'S EDGE

Tá athéirí suntasach ag tarlú thart orainn i saol na Gaeilge – rabharta mór Gaeilge atá ann.  Tá an teanga ina gné lárnach agus tathagach i zeitgeist ár linne, agus tá sí ag fágáil a lorg go láidir ar cheol, scannánaíocht, scríbhneoireacht, faisean, agus na meáin ar bhealaigh atá úrnua, fuinniúil, agus spreagúil.  Cén borradh atá taobh thiar den rabharta mór seo? Cén tionchar atá á imirt...

Audre Lorde described the margin as a site of radical possibility, a place to experiment, play, ask different questions, subvert, resist, and imagine the world anew. With places to live and create often prohibitively expensive, and places to party and come together increasingly being closed down, our cities can become places of isolation and loneliness. This discussion explores how subcultures, gr...

What began as an issue in isolated pockets of Ireland’s cities has become a national crisis affecting every facet of Irish life. Though it consistently tops opinion polls as Irish people’s most important issue and continues to be debated and discussed at every level of media discourse, progress or even clarity on the issue of housing often feels beyond our reach. Hosted by journalist and author, U...

In an age of mass production, craft offers a way of imagining a better world, a slow, human process that connects us to material, to place, and to one another. Artist Domino Whisker, knife-maker Hugh Byrne, and Anike Tyrrell, founder and artistic director of J. Hill’s Standard Glass, discuss the resurgence of Irish craft and its dialogue with design, memory, identity, and modern culture. From hand...

Left-wing journalists across the world continue to report on injustice and violence, but their work has become ever more difficult in the face of rising authoritarianism. Dimi Reider is an Israeli journalist living in London. He is the co-founder of +972 Magazine, the Palestinian-Israeli media collective that has undertaken many major investigations into the ongoing genocide in Gaza, and was a maj...

The internet has become a very different place thanks to the rise of AI, with automated content, generative bots, and dynamic algorithms changing the nature of our online world. For many, 'artificial intelligence' is the route to a better future, but for others, it is a regulatory nightmare metastasizing toxic bias. So are new technologies improving our online world, or contributing to its 'enshit...

With nearly half the Irish population living within a few miles of the coast, rising sea levels and extreme weather are putting our coastal areas at risk. Both coastal erosion and urban flooding are increasing dangers for these communities, many of which also face challenges of economic and demographic sustainability. How can we prepare our coasts for the decades ahead? Featuring Martha Farrell ,...

As the horrors of the genocide in Palestine have unfolded, the reaction from policy-makers and the international community has not matched the will of ordinary people to respond. Humanitarian workers and activists have gone to extraordinary lengths to make a difference, but after decades of violence, many feel little hope for the prospects of peace and justice. As a country with a deep commitment...

In our age of ever-shorter attention spans, long-form reporting has become an endangered art. But some stories require months and years of investigation and thought to be told properly. Ed Caesar is a Staff Writer for The New Yorker Magazine , whose recent feature essay, ‘The Irishman’ , offered the most in-depth look yet into Daniel Kinahan and his criminal empire. He has previously been named Jo...

Host Christopher Kissane is joined by Aoife Gallagher (Institute for Strategic Dialogue, author of Web of Lies ) and journalist Una Mullally (The Irish Times) to unpack the rise of far-right extremism and online disinformation in Ireland. From viral conspiracy theories to foreign interference and the 2023 Dublin riots, they explore how social media is fueling hate—and what can be done about it. Re...

Can Ireland’s newest national park protect the sea and the people who depend on it — or is conservation becoming a top-down photo op? Last year, the Irish government established Páirc Náisiúnta na Mara, Ciarraí (Kerry Marine National Park), a vast national park that includes many of West Kerry's most iconic locations—Mount Brandon, the Conor Pass, and a large stretch of ocean off the Kerry coast....

How can we create a socially sustainable future for tourism, and provide places for people to live in their own communities? Tourism has become vital for many places in the west of Ireland, providing customers and opportunities for everything from hotels and restaurants to arts and crafts. The annual influx of visitors has revitalised towns all along the ‘Wild Atlantic Way, sustaining many small b...

From genocide to corruption, it is increasingly hard to escape the feeling that in geopolitics today, anything goes. Recent months have seen an extraordinary breakdown in the norms of international affairs. The controversial return of Donald Trump to the White House has repositioned America and damaged the Western Democratic Alliance that has dominated transatlantic affairs for a century. The...

On the day of Ireland's general election in December 2024, the longtime leader of the Green Party Eamon Ryan sat down with Chris Kissane at Ireland’s Edge. Marking the end of his political tenure after 25 years, and with his party’s prospects looking bleak, Eamon and Chris discussed why it’s not easy being green. Junior partners in two major coalition governments over the last 15 years, the Greens...

It has been a rough couple of years for Ireland's national broadcaster RTÉ, with a series of scandals damaging public trust and support for its funding in future. Revelations about secret payments to top presenters led to many refusing to pay their license fee, while politicians subjected executives to often aggressive grillings on live television.  The man tasked with sorting out the mess is...

On today’s episode, the generational divide over climate action. While most of the world agrees with the scientific fact that humans are dangerously altering the earth’s climate, we can’t agree what to do about it. Global powers and corporate giants quarrel over who should do what, while generations argue about the need for urgency. In a global crisis where the blame and the damage are unequally d...

For centuries, Irish universities have been bastions of intellectual life, shaping education, politics, culture, and debate. With over half of young people receiving a third-level education, Ireland boasts one of the world's most university-educated populations. Yet, amidst political, financial, and societal pressures, uncertainty looms - can these institutions maintain their standard of scholarsh...

It is no exaggeration to say that the history of modern Ireland has been played out on the stage of our national theatre, The Abbey, founded in 1904, and after independence the first publicly-subsidised theatre in the English-speaking world. It was there that Ireland first saw many of the great plays of Gregory, Yeats, Synge, O’Casey and others, often to great public debate and controversy. The Ab...

The Irish were once the biggest newspaper readers in Europe, but in recent years our interest has begun to decline. With news reporting and investigative journalism facing an existential funding crisis, and trust in information itself rapidly declining due to "fake news" and the excesses of social media, what is the future of a world with less news, and what are the consequences? Recorded live at...

Artificial Intelligence has already begun to change the world around us, at a speed that few of us anticipated. Will the advancement of AI bring positive progress and societal evolution, or have we created something we cannot control? On this fifth episode of Ireland’s Edge - The Podcast, Chris speaks to two fascinating guests about what opportunities and challenges this brave new world may have i...

Artists all around the world are trying to make sense of what the advance of artificial intelligence will mean for their creative work. Will the very human traits of passion and creativity survive in a world where we let ever more intelligent machines do the work for us? In Belfast, the innovative people behind production company Dumbworld have been thinking about this question in radical ways, in...

Once again this winter, the Irish healthcare system has been overwhelmed, with thousands of appointments cancelled, hundreds lying on hospital trollies waiting for beds, and staff once more having to complain about unsafe and unfair working conditions. On this episode, Chris speaks to three women who see the healthcare system from very different angles: Professor Sara Burke is Director of the Cent...

"I’ve worked on a lot of conflicts that looked like they were intractable. A solution takes a lot of international effort; you’ve got to look for multiple honest brokers." From the horrendous destruction of Gaza, to the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine, to the return of Donald Trump, geopolitics feels terrifyingly unstable right now. On this week’s episode we hear from one of the world’s leadin...

Series 4 / Episode 1 Chris speaks to BBC Ireland correspondent Aoife Moore about the controversial rise of Ireland’s largest political party, Sinn Fein. Hardline militants in the republican movement used to regard their political wing as a place for ‘women and cowards’, but with Sinn Fein already the largest party in Northern Ireland, and leading the polls for the next Dail election, how do we ass...

On this episode, The People Have The Power.  While debates about social change often focus on Government policy, all across Ireland there are citizens and volunteers taking it upon themselves to create the change they want to see in their communities. At Ireland’s Edge, Muireann Kelliher spoke to three such inspiring individuals to hear their stories and ask them how we can better harness the...