Irish Stew Podcast

In this episode, we reach for the stars with Irish American astronaut Dr. Cady Coleman, a veteran of two Space Shuttle missions and 159 days in orbit on the International Space Station (ISS). Cady says she’s one-quarter Irish on both sides, but that it adds up to much more than half. When not exploring outer space, she’s exploring Irish music on the flute and tin whistle, even playing with the Chi...

From Carnegie Hall to Lambeau Field, Gregory Harrington elevates the Global Irish Nation Conversation through his music. Born in Dublin, based in New York City, he is redefining the classical violin virtuoso for the 21st century, pairing his expressive lyricism, tonal beauty, and impeccable musicianship with his uncanny ability to transform film scores, jazz standards, rock and pop music into comp...

In this episode we explore the “roots” and “routes” of the Irish diaspora for a very “Global Irish Nation Conversation” with CEO Patrick Greene and Historian-in-Residence Maurice J. Casey Ph. D. of Dublin’s EPIC: The Irish Emigration Museum, voted Europe’s leading tourist attraction the last three years running. Patrick shares how an apprenticeship in archeology led him into a lifelong internation...

Despite growing up with no TV in a rural upstate hamlet, Kristen Shaughnessy would go on to become a fixture in New York TV news as reporter and anchor with the 24-hour news station New York 1.  Kristen was on the frontlines of the non-stop news coverage of the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center and she takes us back to the grim reality that emerged that fateful day, sharing poignant details an...

Born in the Irish America hotbed of Buffalo, New   York, Jennifer Petoff lives in Dublin now. Following a career that has taken unexpected twists. A holder of a Ph. D. in Chemistry from Stanford University, we talk about women in STEM and how Jennifer made her way to Dublin, where she works in the SRE (Site Reliability Engineering) field. Jennifer is also one of four editors of Site Reliability En...

On this serving of Irish Stew, we travel from Manhattan (pop. 1.6 M) to Inisheer (pop. 250) to explore the sights, sounds, haunting landscape, natural history, and vibrant culture of the Aran Islands with our affable tour guide—Irish language advocate and sean-nós singer, MacDara Ó Conaola. MacDara guides us over the common ground all three of the Aran Islands share, what makes each one distinct,...

Through her work on the award-winning The Coastal Atlas of Ireland and on harvesting the power of ocean winds, our guest Val Cummins is a compelling advocate for embracing the potential off Ireland’s shores.  Just named the best Irish-published book of the year, and weighing in at a hefty 10 pounds/4.5 kilos, The Coastal Atlas of Ireland is an unprecedented exploration of Ireland’s coastline and a...

Colin Broderick likes to tell stories, needs to tell them, be they dark, dank, and dangerous, be they bright, affirming, and knowing.  It’s all there in his new film A Bend in the River , his highly personal tale of a writer returning to his native County Tyrone still in the shadows of “The Troubles,” confronting the life and loves he left behind and writing as if his life depended on it, with box...

Clare McGee wears multiple hats, most notably as a principal of Innovate-NI , a management consulting company established 2016 in Derry, Northern Ireland. Along with cofounder Dr. Barney Toal , the company focuses on small business development, entrepreneurship, digital and social innovation projects. Clare is also a cofounder of AwakenHub , a social enterprise organization whose mission is to lev...

For Paul Finnegan it all goes back to his hometown of Galway City, “a small city but I refuse to call it a town” he says and a “crucible of many great things,” notwithstanding its reputation for being “where ambition goes to die.” But Paul explains why, despite his love for “The City of Tribes,” he traded “one great city for another'' and moved from Galway City to New York City, where he...

How much of our history would remain buried if not for a few intrepid explorers of the past?  In this episode we explore little known Irish diaspora stories buried in cemeteries over 1,300 miles apart in Colorado and Georgia. Drawing on his research of an abandoned cemetery high in the Rocky Mountains, historian Prof. Jim Walsh tells the tale of the Irish miners who migrated to work hard and die y...

Natalie Nugent O’Shea takes us from St. Paul, Minnesota, around the world with Riverdance, to Dublin to start a family, and then back home to St. Paul where she’d co-found a home for Irish arts and culture in the Midwest, the Celtic Junction Arts Center. She tells us of her arm’s-length relationship to Ireland until moonlighting as a lighting designer for a touring production of Riverdance, fallin...

WASSUP? Season III of Irish Stew is WASSUP! We launch with an episode on the Irish ad man responsible for the memorable Budweiser commercial that had people around the world shouting WASSUP--Vinny Warren. Vinny takes you from his native Galway to London, New York, Boston and finally Chicago, relates why his time as a bartender would later prove so valuable, how being a Central Park carriage driver...

Emer Rocke gives an insider’s perspective on the lives of those most global of Irish citizens, the people of Ireland’s diplomatic corps. The Deputy Ambassador of Ireland to the United States at time of the interview, now Director of U.S. and Canadian Relations, Emer discusses the rewards and challenges of the diplomatic life, how Ireland punches above its weight in the international arena, why oth...

Janet Behan carries on the family tradition of creativity in both her acting and writing. The London-born daughter of Dublin-born playwright Brian Behan & Celia Behan, great niece of the songwriter Peadar Kearney (author of Amhrán na bhFiann, the Irish National Anthem), and niece of the writers Dominic Behan and Brendan Behan. On this serving of The Stew, she tells of a deprived but happy chil...

Cauvery Madhavan adds Indian spices to this serving of Irish Stew as we trace her journey from Chennai, India to Sligo, Ireland, to County Kildare, and travel back with her to India to explore Irish stories there through her epic novel The Tainted. We talk of race and color in India and Ireland, the Anglo-Indians who were often more Irish than Anglo, the bonds Indian students forged with Irish rev...

A legal advocate for immigration in America, Irish-born, Chicago-based Fiona McEntee is a recognizable media-friendly face and voice in the U.S. immigration conversation through interviews by MSNBC, BBC, CNN, The New York Times, Politico, The Chicago Tribune…and now Irish Stew. She is the founding and managing attorney of McEntee Law Group which represents individuals, families, and some of the wo...

Dublin born Paddy McGrath represented his native country at the Sydney Olympics in 2000. For many, that pinnacle achievement would represent an end point to the pursuit of glory in an athletic career.  Most, who chase perfection in the hammer throwing circle, leave the sport for more lucrative endeavors.   While Paddy hung up his hammer glove some 20 years ago, he has continued his involvement in...

Fin Dwyer has always been interested in history. He grew up in Castlecomer, Kilkenny surrounded by the vestiges of the past and so  when he went to college, he pursued this passion, graduating with a master's degree in archaeology. However, the best laid plans often go awry, the freshly minted graduate started out in his chosen field only to have his career prospects crushed by the financial...

With the republication of his epic novel Banished Children of Eve , the Bard of Hastings-on-Hudson Peter Quinn joins us for a sometimes serious, occasionally irreverent, always insightful look into the global Irish identity from the Irish American perspective. We follow the immigrant’s evolution from the “Paddy” of the famine Irish who washed up on U.S. shores and into Banished… to “Pat” in dogged...

Sorcha’s story takes us back and forth across the Irish Sea and Atlantic Ocean as she sets her course towards storytelling and journalism on radio and TV for RTE, Newstalk, BBC and CBS. With a step into the unknown she landed at the New York Film Academy earning a diploma in filmmaking and acquiring the skills she’d deploy most notably in  “Passing It On: Ballymun Kickhams” for RTE 1, her telling...

Growing up in rural poverty in Co. Limerick, Michael Dowling was surrounded by a “cacophony of nos.” Fortunately for Dowling there was no better motivation than being told he couldn’t do something. That spirit and a prodigious amount of hard work propelled him through University College Cork, success on the hurling pitch, further education and a professorship at Fordham, a long run as director of...

Jack Byrne grew up in Liverpool, the son of post WWII Irish emigrants. In his first novel, Under the Bridge , Jack takes the Liverpool of his parent's era to craft an engrossing mystery featuring the post war Irish and their struggles as they try to make there way in a country that at times is hostile to their presence. We talk with Jack about his life, the challenges of writing and publishin...

A brick came through the window and an idyllic life in the Co. Donegal resort town of Buncrana was shattered as The Troubles spilled over from Derry with the realization that “This can end.” Working to ensure that it doesn’t end for Irish art, culture, and history in America, Turlough McConnell committed to a creative life. As a writer, producer, curator and as president/CEO of Turlough McConnell...

From when her mother gave her a book of James Thurber’s cartoons, Liza Donnelly has expressed her wit and rising political consciousness through pencils, pens, watercolors, and now through her live drawing on an iPad at the Oscars, the Democratic National Convention, other marquee events for CBS. On this episode, Liza traces her journey from Washington, D.C. to New York, with an impactful year-lon...